“You just had to be there” isn’t quite the recipe for cultural reproduction. When crypto cults are the currency, October trades in old money. Its programme treats boomer avant-gardes to low-budget reenactments of their prime. The crowd, like the gallery walls, look worse for wear.
Burroughs should be sexy, right? Penguin didn’t make him a Classic for nothing and neither did, cringe, Guadagnino’s latest film. The scribbles – for that is what many of the drawings on show amount to – may be the products of the same fevered mind that birthed Naked Lunch but here, this mind misses its exalted status. The gallery’s economy frames, old-fashioned museum mounts, and lukewarm wine make the writer’s crazed daring even less obvious.
The legend muddles through, however. A few photo-collages in this collection come a step closer to the writer’s literary record. A singular cardboard portrait of a Crazy Man – a sight Burroughs caught it in a mirror? – holds the artist like a straightjacket.
