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Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Two Shotgun Art Arrest Cards.
Two card stock arrest cards (Oakland, California Police Department, 1947) with shotgun holes, 1980s. Each 200x200 mm; 7 7/8x7 7/8 inches. Each signed in pencil and with the artist's copyright ink stamp, verso.
Ex-collection Nelson Lyon Collection; private collection Florida.
Beat writer and artist Burroughs (1914-1997) had associated with Abstract Expressionist artists for most of his career but only began to paint himself in the early 1980s. In 1981 he moved to Kansas and, perhaps fashioning himself as a type of outlaw, started to create his shotgun works. His art, like his "cut-up" technique of writing, were bold products of chance and loss of control. The creation of his shotgun works were a theatrical performance featuring Burroughs splintering collages, paintings and at times found objects with sprays of buckshot. Like Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s, Burroughs filmed his violent process, further blurring the line between performance and abstract art. Burroughs was a known gun fanatic who thrilled in collecting and shooting guns. The fact that he accidentally fatally shot his wife Joan Vollmer in 1951 makes these works even more jarring and disruptive.
