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William Burroughs, Visual Artist

That's right...Mr. "Naked Lunch," Beat Generation survivor...is a painter and collagist. He's been doing this quietly for nearly half a century. Using cutup newspapers and magazines, paint and photography, his goal is to create a new, visual language with his art in the same way he tried to create a kind of random storytelling in the pages of his books. Burroughs also works in a medium that brought him a certain notoriety in the 1950's - guns - specifically, shotgun-blasted boards (they're painted too). The first-ever retrospective of Burroughs' visual art is now at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. NPR's Ina Jaffe reports.

Copyright 1996 NPR

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