I sat for decades at morning breakfast tea looking out my kitchen window, one day recognized my own world the familiar backyard, a giant wet brick-walled undersea Atlantis garden, waving ailanthus (“stinkweed”) “Trees of Heaven,” with chimney pots along Avenue A topped by Stuyvesant Town apartments’ upper floors two blocks distant on 14th Street, I focus’d on the raindrops along the clothesline. “Things are symbols of themselves,” said Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. New York City August 18, 1984
1984
Artist, American, 1926 - 1997
Artwork overview
-
Medium
gelatin silver print
-
Credit Line
-
Dimensions
image: 42 x 28 cm (16 9/16 x 11 in.)
sheet: 50.5 x 40.5 cm (19 7/8 x 15 15/16 in.) -
Accession
2009.103.17
-
Copyright
Copyright (c) 2010 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Allen Ginsberg Estate; Ellen and Gary Davis, Greenwich, CT (through Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York); gift to NGA, 2009.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
2010
Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, National Gallery of Art, Washington; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Grey Art Gallery & Study Center, New York University, New York; The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, 2010 - 2013, no. 101.
Inscriptions
signed by artist, lower right on sheet in black ink: Allen Ginsberg; artist inscription, across bottom under image: I sat for decades at morning breakfast tea looking out my kitchen window, one day recognized my own world the familiar background, a giant wet brick-walled undersea Atlantis garden, waving ailanthus ("stinkweed") "Trees of Heaven," with chimney pots along Avenue A topped by Stuyvesant Town apartments' upper floors two blocks distant on 14th street, I focus'd on the raindrops along the clothesline. "Things are symbols of themselves," said Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. New York City August 18, 1984; on verso, by unknown hand, across lower center in graphite: GD-AG-92; across lower right: GDC-853