Conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg began his career in the radical environment of 1960s Los Angeles, exploring cultural narratives and mythologies using very ordinary materials such as postcards, newspaper articles, books, and magazines from his personal collections, often to humorous effect. In his installation The Singing Posters: Allen Ginsberg's Howl by Allen Ruppersberg (Part I) (2003), on view in Gallery 1, Ruppersberg plasters a room with hundreds of Day-Glo posters of Ginsberg's famous poem, which was banned as obscene when first published by San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore in 1956. Ruppersberg has written out Ginsberg's poem both normally and phonetically, so that “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness” becomes “Y SAW thuh BEST MYNDS uhv my je-nuh-RAY-shin di-STOYED BY Mad-nis.” The Singing Posters is both an homage to the celebrated Beat poet and a tongue-in-cheek attempt to make “Howl” accessible to future generations. Also part of the installation are notebooks with copies of newspaper articles, magazine ads, concert programs, and ephemera from the period to deepen the visitor's understanding of the spirit, politics, and culture of the late 1950s and sixties. Ruppersberg's projects are typically informative and educational (even as they are parodic), based on his belief that art and life should be interchangeable. More works by Ginsberg and other artists, poets, and writers from the Beat period are on view in Galleries 2 and 3 in the exhibition Semina Culture.
