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Michael Bowen (Artist)

One of the co-founders of the contemporary Visionary art movement [1], Michael Bowen has traveled the world, painted on canvas and paper, made a series of 92 etchings, created assemblage, bronze sculpture, collage, and hand made art books, all using innovative techniques. He is most well known as an icon of the American Beat Generation and 1960's counterculture as well as for his performance art creation of the first Human Be-In in the Golden Gate Park of San Francisco. He continues his prolific five decades of mystical fine art and remains influential amongst avante-garde art circles around the world. Because of his social activism during the transformative 60's, Michael Bowen is known as an artistic cultural hero[2].

Early Career in Los Angeles

Michael Bowen was born December 08, 1937 in Beverly Hills to Dr. Sterling Bowen [1]. He started his art career at age 17 when he joined the American installation artist Ed Kienholz in his Los Angeles studio. There he met and joined with other influential Beat Generation artists like Wallace Berman, John Altoon, and Dennis Hopper. Bowen particiapated in the construction of the historially important Ferus Gallery created by Ed Kienholz and curated by Walter Hopps[2]. Michael attended the Chouinard Art Institute for several years during his formative artistic experiences in Los Angeles [3].

San Francisco Beat Generation

Michael Bowen moved to San Francisco in the late 50's and along with fellow artist comrades, Arthur Monroe [3] and Michael McCracken [4], lived and worked out of 72 Commercial Street. Painting spontaneous, impromtu, hectic canvases, along with assemblage and collage, Michael inspired a prolific visual arts explosion that became an integral part of the San Francisco Renaissance. The Norwegian art patron and physician Dr. Reidar Wennesland [5] befriended Michael and many of his bohemian artist friends and collected their artwork [4]. Bowen's work makes up the majority of the paintings in The Wennessland Foundation [[6]] in Kristiansand Norway, alongside many other important North Beach artists such as Jay DeFeo. An important 1963 painting of Janis Joplin, by Bowen, along with a prophetic 1966 Love painting form just a few of the many historically significant Bowen works in the Wennesland Foundation Collection. Bowen's style progresses from large abstract expressionist canvases to figuratives and large faces, to assemblage.


Beginning in Los Angeles with teenage Michael's many visits to the mystical gatherings at Samson De Brier's [[7]] house, and in the late 50's and early 60's, Bowen became fascinated with a variety of occult topics, Eastern philosophies, and mysticism, and his artwork reflected these themes [5].


In 1963, police brutality and persecution drove many of the Beat Generation writers, musicians, and artists out of San Francisco. Michael Bowen along with many of his artist friends moved to an old Abalone Factory in Princeton by the Sea where they lived and painted for many months free from the inner city harassment against the Beatniks. Michael's singer friend, Janis Joplin was a frequent guest at the Princeton Abalone studio [6].

Mexico, New York, and Timothy Leary

Michael Bowen traveled often to Tepoztlan Mexico to visit his mentor and spiritual guide, John Starr Cooke. On one such occasion in 1963, Michael was initiated into an ancient Aztec shamanic ceremony that inspired his future work with world consciousness transformation. After his initiation, Bowen traveled to New York City where he established a studio in the Lower East Side and met with many of the Beat Generation artists, writers, and musicians living on America's East Coast. He visited the two former Harvard professors Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, then Richard Alpert, in their giant mansion at Millbrook, New York, where a new variety of consciousness experimentations were being conducted [7].

Haight-Ashbury and the Summer of Love

In the summer of 1966, Michael Bowen traveled back to San Francisco and established a studio/ashram in the middle of the newly burgeoning Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Michael Bowen along with the poet Allen Cohen co-founded the underground newspaper San Francisco Oracle, that broadcast the 60's counter-culture ideology. Michael became the art director and let his studio become the offices for the Oracle, while Allen was the editor [8]. On October 6, 1966 (666)[[8]], Bowen and Cohen organized the Love Pageant Rally, a celebration of the new law criminalizing LSD in California. Because of Michael Bowen's personal friendship and invitation, Janis Joplin came to the event along with her band Big Brother and the Holding Company and played for free. About 3,000 people came to the Love Pageant Rally and towards the end, Ram Dass, Allen Cohen, and Michael Bowen discussed having another event, this time much bigger, to celebrate the newly developing counter-culture and consciousness expansion in San Francisco [9]. This event, primarily organized by Michael Bowen, became known as the Human Be-In[[9]]. Michael organized the city permit [[10]], the Beat Generation speakers, and the San Francisco rock bands that included The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane to play for free at the event. The Human Be-In was an ecstatic coming together of people for no other reason than to just "BE"; to make love, not war, to share and commune with new friends and to celebrate the miracle of life [[11]]. The Human Be-In was specifically designed by Bowen to be imitated and to be remembered into the future. Historically, the Be-In was the singular event that attracted massive media attention to the counter-culture activities forming in San Francisco [10]. The media infatuation with the Love and Peace movement inspired well over 100,000 youthful participants to move to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood which created the 1967 Summer of Love[[12]]. As a lifelong fine artist, Michael Bowen considers his creation of the Human Be-In to be performance art. This notion was confirmed by an Italian journalist who calls Bowen "The father of performance art" for his Human Be-In creation [11].

On September 2, 2007, San Francisco celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love [[13]]. Michael received from Mayor Gavin Newsom on behalf of the city and county of San Francisco a "Certificate of Honor" recognizing his valuable participation in promoting and creating the Human Be-In which allowed the Summer of Love to manifest [[14]]. The second stage of the Human Be-In is now in 2008 being formulated by Michael Bowen in his European studio.

Flower Power

On October 21, 1967, 75,000 anti war protesters surrounded the Pentagon in Washington D.C.. On that day Michael Bowen organized 200 lbs. of daisies, purchased by his New York friend Peggy Hitchcock (wife of Walter Bowart), to be distributed to the front line protesters as the Military Police protected the Pentagon from the massive anti Vietnam War demonstration [12]. The iconic photograph "Flower Power" taken by photojournalist Bernie Boston of the daisies being put into the gun barrels of the soldiers was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1968 [[15]]. The photograph is listed as #30 amongst the top 100 war time photographs and the idealism of flower power remains with us today as an anti war symbol.

India and Nepal

In 1969 Michael Bowen made his first pilgramage to India and Nepal where he completed a series of drawings and sketches. These drawings were made into a book Journey to Nepal published by City Lights Books in 1970. The book has become a classic as it details the story of Michael's spiritual pilgrimage and meeting with Lama Yeshe in Nepal. Synchronistically, when Bowen was in India in 1983, the verification of Lama Yeshe's Spanish reincarnation Tenzin Ösel Rinpoche was confirmed by Michael Bowen just a few days prior to the confirmation of Lama Zopa and the Dalai Lama. Throughout his five decade fine art career, many of the themes in Bowen's artworks transmit the ancient Dharmic Wisdom of Asia [13].

References

  1. ^ Thomas Albright, Visionary Art, In a Process of Defining Itself, Rolling Stone no. 91 Sept. 16, 1971 pg 50-52
  2. ^ Ted Owen, 1999 'High Art' Sanctuary Publishing Limited pg. 92-94 ISBN 1-86074-256-4
  3. ^ Maxwell Riddle, Palm Springs Life June 1986 vol. XXVIII/no. 10 pg. 60
  4. ^ Thor Myhre, Kunst og Kolera, Norwegian academic press, 1996, ISBN 82-7634-076-8
  5. ^ Frida Forsgren, San Francisco Beat Art in Norway, Press publishing 2008 pg 77 ISBN 978-82-7547-299-9
  6. ^ June Morrall, Princeton by the Sea, Arcadia publishing 2007, pgs. 98-103 ISBN 978-0-7385-5583-6
  7. ^ Gary Lachman, Turn Off Your Mind, Disinformation company 2001, pg 343 ISBN 0-9713942-3-7
  8. ^ Allen Cohen, San Francisco Oracle Facsimile edition, Mark B. Weinman publisher 1990, ISBN 0-916147-11-8
  9. ^ Gene Anthony, The Summer of Love Haight-Ashbury at its Highest, The Last Gasp of San Francisco publisher, 1980, ISBN 0-86719-421-9
  10. ^ Martin A. Lee, Acid Dreams The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion, Grove Press 1985, Pgs. 157-163 ISBN 0-394-62081-X
  11. ^ Stella Spinelli, La Nazione, Giovedi, 17, 1998, Bowen Carmignano Exhibit, "He is the Father of Performance Art" PO-V
  12. ^ Martin A. Lee, Acid Dreams The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion, Grove Press 1985, Pgs. 236 ISBN 0-394-62081-X
  13. ^ Gerd Hennum, På sporet av Beat-bohemene, H. Aushehoug and Co. 1998. pgs 156-158, ISBN 82-03-22254-4

Further Links

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