William S. Burroughs at Gagosian - art exhibition, New York, New York

Let's not counterfeit that these works claim our attention because of any intrinsic visual interest. It is Burroughs's achievement as a writer that arouses our curiosity about his paintings, prints and drawings. That said, there's nothing wrongful with a writer turning to a visual medium. Among those who have done in like manner with distinction are Victor Hugo Antonin Artaud, Henri Michaux and Henry Miller.

single thing that Burroughs had going for him when he started making paintings a not many years ago was that his chosen process--shooting at the canvas with various kinds of guns--was consistent with his long-standing and notorious obsession with firearms. Not that he was the first to turn round target practice into the basis of art making; Niki de Saint Phalle did in like manner years earlier, as did Chris load Andre Breton's pronouncement that the alone true Surrealist act is to go on out into the street and begin shooting at random might smooth be seen as the rounding statement of the genre

This exhibition, however, was not limited to Burroughs's trademark bullet- and buckshot-hole works. Instead it not awayed a group of much more conventional pieces, including various works upon paper, mostly in acrylic, and a suite of thematic prints, The Seven Deadly Sins. A not many of the works on paper do contain hints of gunplay. A small drawing, The Sheriff v W Burrough evidences more [i]or[/i] less buckshot holes, and The Wheel of Fortune, evok in vigorous swirls of orange and verdant paint, has coilaged to it a rifle target with a small in number well-placed bullet holes.

Each of the Seven Deadly Sins is treated in a pair of 45-by-31-inch prints, single containing a Burroughs text and the other a visual image. For the greatest in quantity part Burroughs avoids the temptation of illustrating his be in possession of words, offering instead relatively abstract forms that occasionally separate into a recognizable object. in Lust, for example, we can make without a large snake, in hate a gun and in Gluttony a certain number of masklike faces.

The body s themselves are set in an exaggerated, hard-to-read Gothic typeface that recalls the individual that Walt Kelly, in his comic strip Pogo used for the Deacon's words. Burrough tenders short meditations on each of the Seven Deadly Sins and his reflections on sin in general. Contrary to expectation, rather than denouncing the idea of sin, he affirms its existence and its importance. Perhaps inside each enfant terrible is a severe moralist waiting to appear, if single the host body survives lengthy enough. Burroughs has certainly survived and, judging by means of these works, he is as active and acidic as ever

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group