How the Beat Generation’s spirit of revelation still echoes in today’s art—and why our pursuit of harmony may silence the next avant-garde
The late 1940s in New York marked a turning point where creation became revelation. The Beat Generation carried that impulse forward, turning poetry into rhythm, painting into movement, and life into something ecstatic. Their restless search for authenticity shaped an avant-garde that was both spiritual and aesthetic.
But what happens when that disquiet fades? We now live in an age of digital calm and curated perfection—one that celebrates balance yet fears disturbance. Have we grown too tranquil for such a vision to resurface?
This was the atmosphere evoked by Alessandro Castiglioni in “Sounds Like a Beat”, a digital lecture presented by Istituto Marangoni Milan as part of the Fashion Graduate Italia 2025 programme.
What Was the Beat Generation? History and Cultural Impact
Many believe that the Beat Generation originated at Columbia University, where figures like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and Hal Chase came together, united by a desire to forge a new vision of society in opposition to academic traditions. This informal circle soon expanded to include other key personalities, such as William Burroughs, Edie Parker, and various friends and collaborators, all sharing a restless drive to explore life beyond conventional boundaries.
Painters, poets, and jazz musicians began to improvise not only new forms but new states of being. The Beats championed rebellion against societal rules, the pursuit of a deeply personal style, fascination with Asian spirituality, and a rejection of materialism—all while striving to represent the human condition with honesty and intensity.
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Jack Kerouac is a key figure within the Beat Generation movement
The term Beat, first coined by Kerouac in 1948 during a conversation with Herbert Huncke, conveyed a sense of weariness and disillusionment. However, Kerouac also embraced its spiritual resonance, linking it to the idea of “beatific”—a state of blessed, heightened consciousness.
Inspired by the rhythms of jazz, especially Charlie Parker’s bebop style, the Beat Generation transformed art, poetry, and prose into a dynamic, breathing experience. This movement gained further recognition through John Clellon Holmes, whose article This Is the Beat Generation, published in the New York Times, provided a public label for a cultural shift already reshaping American society in the post-war era.
By the early 1950s, this energy began to cross the Atlantic, influencing young creatives across Europe in diverse and often experimental ways.
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Jazz legend Charlie Parker, one of the pillars of the bebop style, has always been a crucial reference for Beat Generation artists
Was the Beat Generation the Last True Avant-Garde?
Alessandro Castiglioni suggested that the Beat Generation could be seen as the new avant-garde, as echoes of the European avant-gardes crossed the Atlantic after the war, carrying with them the legacies of Surrealism and Dada. In their wake, a generation arose that sought to merge art and life so completely that the two became inseparable.
In other words, the Beat Generation inherited the spirit of those earlier avant-gardes but were more intimate, more wounded, and more ecstatic. Their revolution was not visual but spiritual, driven not by manifestos but by visions.
Jack Kerouac on Art and Life: “We’re Called Beat Because We Have Visions
“We’re called Beat because we have visions.” Jack Kerouac’s definition of beat transformed the concept of marginality into a mystical position. It was not simply about rhythm or exhaustion; it was about revelation.
In Castiglioni’s reading, this was the avant-garde reborn in a new register. Rather than focusing on geometric abstraction or mechanical shock, the Beats practised an inner form of radicalism. Their art was not made to provoke but to dissolve boundaries between creation and existence.
Pollock, Parker, and Kerouac formed a trinity of expressive freedom. Each artist, in his respective medium, embodied the same principle: the idea that the gesture itself could become a state of consciousness. Pollock’s dripping, Parker’s improvisation, and Kerouac’s “scroll-writing” all emerged from the same impulse to allow rhythm to replace control. The automatic writing once theorised by the Surrealists took on a new meaning within the Beat context, as a form of spiritual trance. To create was to surrender and to become a conduit for something unseen.
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Beat poets and friends gather at 24 Cornelia Street, capturing the spirit of 1959 New York’s underground scene
The Sound of Revelation: How Jazz and Poetry Shaped the Beat Generation
When Jack Kerouac recorded Poetry for the Beat Generation with pianist Steve Allen in 1959, he opened with the line: “Charlie Parker looked like Buddha.” The piece was both an elegy and an invocation. Parker appeared as a jazz saint, his music turned into prayer. “All is well,” Kerouac repeated, though his tone wavered between faith and fatigue. The performance showcased language not merely as a structure but as a rhythm. Castiglioni described this as the musicality of language, where meaning dissolved into cadence and the poem became a kind of sonic meditation.
That same spirit influenced Robert Frank’s film Pull My Daisy, narrated by Kerouac in real time. As he watched the footage, he improvised the entire voice-over, transforming the film into an experiment in collective consciousness. It followed the avant-garde tradition of breaking down disciplines, yet it also signalled a shift towards authenticity and immediacy.
Bob Dylan later carried this visionary impulse into popular culture. In Visions of Johanna, his voice floated through the quiet despair of revelation. “These visions of Johanna have now taken my place,” he sang, as if overwhelmed by what he had witnessed. The song connected the Beats to a wider spiritual modernity, where revelation and defeat coexisted in the same breath.
The Beat Legacy Lives On: From the 1960s to Jenny Holzer and Nan Goldin
The Beat legacy did not fade away in the 1960s. In the 1980s, Jenny Holzer projected her LED aphorisms across Times Square. Protect Me From What I Want appeared like a secular prayer, interrupting the flow of advertising. Alessandro Castiglioni interpreted Holzer’s work as a continuation of Beat ethics, seeing it as an attempt to turn language into revelation and to resist the numbing effects of mass communication.
Similarly, Nan Goldin has consistently infused her photography with the same intensity. Her Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1981–2022)—a slideshow documenting life in Provincetown, New York, Berlin, and London from the 1970s and 1980s up to the present day—is now on display at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan as part of the retrospective titled This Will Not End Well. This work is far more than simple documentation; it is ritual. Each image captures a moment of life in motion, capturing what Castiglioni described as the act of “crystallising the flow of life.” Goldin’s camera transforms intimacy into mythology, giving visual form to both the sacred and the fragile.
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Jenny Holzer, Protect Me From What I Want (from Survival, 1983-85)
The Beat Generation Today: Are We Too Calm to Spark a New Avant-Garde?
Today, the visionary impulse survives in fragments. The avant-garde once sought revelation, but now we often seek coherence. Social media aesthetics reward harmony, not disturbance. Yet the creative act still begins in the same place: in restlessness, in disquiet, in the refusal to be pacified.
To be “beat” today is not to be broken but to remain open. It means allowing the ghosts of the past to speak, noticing what others overlook, and creating from the tension between beauty and unease.
The foundation of modern creativity was never about technique. It was—and still is—about revelation.
Edoardo Passacantando
Editor, Milano