Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Through October 15 - Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Censored Tarps at Rena Bransten. I remember fondly a weekday evening not long after I first moved to San Francisco in 1997, where I ran over to City Lights and squeezed myself into a spot on the floor to hear Lawrence Ferlinghetti read poetry to the assembled adoring horde. The three tarps currently on display at Rena Bransten were painted by Ferlinghetti during that same general time period, in 1992, and they feature references to American iconography, to Chagall and Picasso, and to the poet's own history as called out in the gallery wall text:
"After an unstable childhood, Ferlinghetti spent several years on U.S. Navy ships and was the commander of a U.S. Navy sub chaser at the Normandy invasion during WWII. He was also stationed in Nagasaki only six weeks after second atomic bomb was dropped, witnessing atrocities that would stay with him for life. His later activisim, political dissidence, and 'radical pacifism' were a direct result, and have been present in his paintings ever since."
The exhibition also features one recent work, a swirling mass of black and grey paint depicting a solo figure on a boat. We see them from the back, and look with them into the great unknown as they sail ever forward.
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