Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris
Retrospective Maps Brion Gysin’s Avant-Garde Canon

When Brion Gysin “let the mice in” — the title he gave his book about cutups — I don’t think he meant the many artists he influenced, among them William S. Burroughs, his most important associate, who once said Gysin “is the only man I have ever respected. … He was completely enigmatic because he was completely himself.” I believe Gysin thought that his accidental discovery of cutups as a writing technique meant that “any number can play.” His was a democratizing influence. That influence — of his personality and his art, which went well beyond cutups (his main practice, after all, was painting) — is now on view in Paris at the Musée d’Art Moderne.

From the catalogue: “The exhibition retraces the major stages of Gysin’s unique career encompassing all the twentieth-century avant-garde movements, and in counterpoint, showcases the works of artists with whom he forged close ties and whom he inspired: Burroughs, Françoise Janicot and Bernard Heidsieck, John Giorno, Keith Haring, Patti Smith, Ramuntcho Matta, and so on. It also shows the strong connections between Gysin and the city of Paris, where he lived for a large part of his life.

“Gysin spent time [there] during the 1930s when he was a student at the Sorbonne. At the turn of the 1960s, he gravitated toward the artists of the Beat Generation at the famous Beat Hotel (9, rue Gît le-Cœur, Paris 6th). From the 1970s until his death in 1986, he lived in an apartment opposite the Pompidou Center. Shortly before his death, he bequeathed his entire estate to the city of Paris.

“The exhibition highlights all the dimensions and possibilities of the Cut-up, a technique Gysin discovered in fall 1959 at the Beat Hotel in Paris. This technique is a dadaist revival involving cutting up a text and randomly rearranging the pieces. The exhibition also demonstrates the centrality of the Dreamachine—a rotary cylinder with slits and a lightbulb inside—to Gysin’s oeuvre and his imagination. The rotating cylinder emits light through the slits at a special frequency, which produces a relaxing effect on the brain and generates visions for the user when they are looking at the Dreamachine with their eyes closed, through their eyelids.”