LET IT COME LET IT GO is a poem and a painting by John Giorno (1936–2019).
The coming and going of things is a natural phenomenon. We see this movement in the cyclical course of the planets and seasons and in the eternal rhythm of the waves. But it is also a phenomenon that is usually associated with complex emotions: nostalgia, pain, relief, regret... It may be difficult periods in our lives that we are glad to see come to an end, happy times that we find hard to let go of, a loved one we long for, or money or health problems that we would rather forget all about. Yet Giorno’s piece, which reveals the dual influences of Pop Art and Buddhism on his practice, is devoid of sentimentality.
John Giorno was a radical American poet, musician, performance artist, gay rights activist, and a central figure in the artistic avant-garde of New York in the 1960s and 70s. Giorno was inspired by the experimental contemporary art scene to rethink the possibilities of poetry and collaborated with artists such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Carolee Schneeman, and William S. Burroughs. In 1965, he founded Giorno Poetry Systems, a platform dedicated to making innovative poetry accessible to a wider audience. One of his most famous works is Dial-a-Poem, 1969, where recordings of poems by William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Vito Acconci, and many others were made available with a single phone call. The work was later included in the seminal exhibition Information at MoMA, New York, in 1970.
In the mid-1960s, Giorno was introduced by Allen Ginsberg to the phenomenon of the “cut-up”, a literary technique in which the distinction between words and images is dissolved through the use of collage. Giorno soon began printing fragments of his own poems as visual arrangements, initially on posters and T-shirts. In 1968, he produced his first “poem painting”: silk screen printing on canvas, large letters on a simple background. This would become a recurring format throughout the rest of his artistic career, sometimes painted, sometimes printed. From 1984 onwards, these works were all executed in the same graphic font designed by Mark Michaelson.
Giorno's “poem paintings” require that the reader/viewer either fill in the blanks, or that they accept the fragment as the image it is: EATING THE SKY; EVERYONE GETS LIGHTER; WE GAVE A PARTY FOR THE GODS AND THE GODS ALL CAME; THANX 4 NOTHING. “These things work because they're so brief you almost don't read them,” Giorno explained, “They become iconic.” With equal parts humour, wisdom, and rhythm, Giorno made his mark on the New York art scene of the 1960s and 1970s, and his words and work are equally potent today.
LET IT COME LET IT GO is an exclamation, a mantra, and an expression of a way of life (Giorno converted to Tibetan Buddhism in 1971). But as other signs in the public space, it can also be experienced simply as poetic, visual constellation. Full stop.
LET IT COME LET IT GO is the inaugural artwork for SKILTET, a program of site-specific commissions presented on a billboard at the grounds of Hornbæk Kunsthal, a forthcoming art space planned for the coastal town of Hornbæk in North Zealand, Denmark, opening in 2027. The programme is curated by Margrethe Troensegaard and coordinated by Kristina McLean.
