Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Barton
Edited with text by Rachel Federman.
This first ever book on the Bay Area Beat artist reveals a unique drawing style that dovetails Cocteau with Japanese and Renaissance printmaking
“Rick Barton should have been a San Francisco legend,” declared author and artist Etel Adnan in a 1998 essay. Working primarily in pen or brush and ink in a kaleidoscopic linear style, Barton (1928–92), who was born and raised in New York and settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1950s, ceaselessly recorded the world around him, whether the enclosed space of his room, the cafes in which he spent his days, his lovers and friends, or the ornate churches and botanical subjects that seem to have held particular fascination for him. Flourishing in San Francisco’s gay and Beat subcultures of the 1950s and ’60s, Barton accrued a group of disciples who were drawn to his singular style, which synthesized sources as disparate as Renaissance and Japanese woodblock prints and the delicate line drawings of Jean Cocteau. Bringing together more than 60 drawings, two accordion-folded sketchbooks, and printed portfolios and books, Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Barton presents for the first time the work of this unique artist who was a significant, and until now unheralded, figure of the Beat era. Rachel Federman, the curator of the exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum, has written a deeply researched essay on the artist and his work. An excerpt of Adnan’s essay—the first published account of Barton—is reprinted in the catalog.
Featured image, titled "Eleven Double You Four Plus" (1960), is reproduced from 'Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Barton'.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
New Yorker
Andrea Scott
As the late artist Etel Adnan wrote in an essay from 1998, excerpted in the Morgan’s excellentcatalogue, “Rick Barton should have been a San Francisco legend.” With this intimate, astonishingexhibition, he finally is.
Brooklyn Rail
Ann McCoy
Hats off to the Morgan’s Rachel Federman. She was the curator who brought [Rick Barton] out ofobscurity with real leg work and scholarly research and is at present the only scholarly resource onBarton’s work. Her catalogue essay is a great piece of art writing and captures the life and spirit of theman; she is also an engaging storyteller. I would encourage buying the catalogue.
New York Review of Books
Lucy Ives
An intimate and refreshing exhibition at the Morgan Library... The curator Rachel Federman has greatlyexpanded [Rick Barton’s] reputation with this show, as well as a biographically rich catalog essay.
New York Times: Arts
Walker Mimms
A workaday recluse who sought self-knowledge by way of a monastic and unquestioned creative ethic. A nobody who, through a rare curatorial eureka moment, has become an instantaneous, mesmeric somebody.
The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
Michael Quinn
Writing a Chrysanthemum teems with intense, mysterious feeling.
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Featured drawing, titled “Portrait of Russ Zerbe” (1962), is reproduced from Writing a Chrysanthemum, the first book ever published on the drawings of Bay Area Beat artist Rick Barton. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum, on view now through September 11, 2022, and authored by the show’s curator, Rachel Federman, the book also contains an excerpt of a beautiful 1998 essay by painter Etel Adnan, who writes: “In the very early days of [the] sixties I was introduced to a person who was spending his life sitting in two or three eating places in San Francisco and drawing ceaselessly the faces of the people around, their hands most often. … Rick Barton should have been a San Francisco legend. But he lived in a kind of anonymity, I should say clandestinity, because he was a thorough opium smoker and lonelier than a sailor.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.5 x 11 in. / 144 pgs / 118 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $49.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.95 GBP £39.99 ISBN: 9781636810386 PUBLISHER: DelMonico Books/Morgan Library & Museum AVAILABLE: 6/14/2022 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Barton
Published by DelMonico Books/Morgan Library & Museum. Edited with text by Rachel Federman.
This first ever book on the Bay Area Beat artist reveals a unique drawing style that dovetails Cocteau with Japanese and Renaissance printmaking
“Rick Barton should have been a San Francisco legend,” declared author and artist Etel Adnan in a 1998 essay. Working primarily in pen or brush and ink in a kaleidoscopic linear style, Barton (1928–92), who was born and raised in New York and settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1950s, ceaselessly recorded the world around him, whether the enclosed space of his room, the cafes in which he spent his days, his lovers and friends, or the ornate churches and botanical subjects that seem to have held particular fascination for him. Flourishing in San Francisco’s gay and Beat subcultures of the 1950s and ’60s, Barton accrued a group of disciples who were drawn to his singular style, which synthesized sources as disparate as Renaissance and Japanese woodblock prints and the delicate line drawings of Jean Cocteau.
Bringing together more than 60 drawings, two accordion-folded sketchbooks, and printed portfolios and books, Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Barton presents for the first time the work of this unique artist who was a significant, and until now unheralded, figure of the Beat era. Rachel Federman, the curator of the exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum, has written a deeply researched essay on the artist and his work. An excerpt of Adnan’s essay—the first published account of Barton—is reprinted in the catalog.
