Sans titre, 1962

Brion Gysin  

Brion Gysin was a British Canadian performer, poet, writer and painter born January 19, 1916 in Taplow, Buckinghamshire and died July 13, 1986 in Paris.

He is known to have discovered at the Beat Hotel the technique of "Cut-up" by cutting with a cutter the sheets of newspaper which were under the sheet of drawing which he was cutting, process which does not go well. without recalling Tristan Tzara. In chapter 8 of his manifesto Dada on weak love and bitter love, he writes:

"To make a Dadaist poem

Take a newspaper

Take scissors.

Choose an article from this journal that is the length you plan to give your poem.

Cut out the article.

Then carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in

a bag.

Shake gently.

Then take out each cut one after the other.

Copy carefully in the order they left the bag.

The poem will look like you.

In the early 1960s, he and Ian Sommerville built the Dreamachine, a device that was supposed to be viewed with closed eyes.

Avant-garde journals in France have published Brion Gysin a lot. In particular, the review Luna-Park published drawings and texts by Brion Gysin in his first series as well as in the new series where unpublished chapters in French of his book The Last Museum have appeared in a translation by Sylvie Durastanti.

His abundant graphic work has often been exhibited in particular at the Museum of Modern Art in Brussels and at the National Foundation of Graphic and Plastic Arts in 1980 (Writings exhibition) and in 1993 at the Lyon biennial Et tous les changer le monde (curator Marc Dachy) with his Dreamachine. A biography was devoted to him in 2005 at Disinformation by John Geiger as well as an important monograph in 2003 at Thames and Hudson by José Ferez Kuri.