John Giorno
In 1965, John Giorno founded the Giorno Poetry Systems, an artists’ collective and record label, to relay poetry to a wider audience using innovative means of communication.
One such innovation was Dial-A-Poem, which, since 1968, has continuously allowed access to anyone who wishes to hear poetry readings over the phone. John Giorno was also a pioneer of performance poetry, intense spoken word events performed before a live audience.
In the 1980s, Giorno began to add a pictorial dimension to his work, creating Poem Paintings composed of words and phrases from his poems in the form of paintings, murals, drawings and screen prints.
This series of prints, presented and produced by Cahiers d’Art, takes up the artist’s legendary Poem Paintings, using excerpts from the poems that are sometimes cynical, sometimes naive, sometimes celebrating the world. The exhibition was on view from 2 March to 30 September 2017.
