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Original artwork by influential novelist and Beat poet Jack Kerouac, entitled ‘Old Angel Midnight,’ the eponymous title of his long narrative poem and a book of the same name published posthumously in 1973. Accomplished in mixed media (ink and pastel) on an 11 x 15 sheet of illustration board, the scene depicts the title character in white hovering against a night sky with a large crescent moon. Below the angel looms an illuminated clocktower with hands at midnight, two tenement buildings with yellow-lit windows, shared clotheslines with flapping white sheets and garments, and a rickety brown fence. Included with the artwork is the original protective art sleeve, which is marked in black felt tip, “Jack Kerouac, Old Angel Midnight.” Both are mounted and framed together to an overall size of 30.75 x 23.25. In fine condition.
Accompanied by a CD of the 1997 spoken word tribute album Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness, the booklet of which pictures ‘Old Angel Midnight’ on page 25, and a letter of authenticity from John Shen-Sampas, the executor of the estate of Jack Kerouac, who affirms: “This letter of authentication is to certify that the painting depicted hereon, entitled ‘Old Angel Midnight,’ is an original painting done by Jack Kerouac and comes directly from the private collection of the Estate of Jack Kerouac.”
The artwork was displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Also, it appeared on the front cover of the Fall 1998 issue of the Kerouac fanzine Dharma Beat, which notes that Kerouac offered the artwork to be used for his book’s cover, but the publisher ultimately thought otherwise.
First published as a pirated edition in 1973, the book Old Angel Midnight offers a treasure trove of Kerouac's experiments with automatic writing and spontaneous composition and is comprised of sixty-seven short sections unified by the poet’s unwavering dedication to sounds, the subconscious, and verbal ingenuity. ‘A masterpiece of the mind freed to fly,’ the work directly inspired Kerouac to create this offered artwork, a piece widely considered to be his best. The angel pictured herein can be intrinsically linked to Kerouac’s childhood and his lifelong Catholic faith; the writer’s fascination and adherence to spirituality and angels is most famously found in the title of his 1965 novel Desolation Angels.
Originally titled ‘Lucien Midnight,’ a name inspired by friend and Beat poet Lucien Carr, ‘Old Angel Midnight’ is a long narrative poem culled from five notebooks spanning from 1956 to 1959, while Kerouac was immersed in his studies of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy. Written strictly in pencil by candlelight, Kerouac's notes on Lucien Midnight were ‘scribbled out in a strictly intuitional discipline at breakneck speed,” commencing during a stay with poet Gary Snyder and continuing on his return to the Lower East Side.
The title change came when Carr objected to the use of his first name, with Kerouac finding his title in December 1958 while listening to a morning talk show that referred to a phrase from Mark Twain’s journal. Twain wrote: ‘I never felt so happy in my life, sir — never since I was born, sir. Loved that hoary, venerable old angel as if he was my father, sir.’
Description Update:
The following details come from pages shown in "Departed Angels: Jack Kerouac The Lost Paintings" by Ed Adler, specifically from the section discussing the Old Angel Midnight artwork.
In a postcard to Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights (his publisher), Kerouac mentioned adding 5000 additional new words to the edition of Old Angel Midnight. He also took special care with the visual elements, even designating a specific typeface for the cover.
The artwork demonstrates an unusual approach for Kerouac in its urban landscape composition, particularly in how he animated the scene through the angle of clothes blowing about on the washlines. According to Adler, the painting does more than illustrate the poem - it celebrates the "gemutlichkeit" (warmth/coziness) of Kerouac's hometown of Lowell in an October dusk.
Adler also notes that this piece was part of a larger series, as there were "a number of drawings he made specifically as covers for the book." One early version featured "a triangle at the center with a very rough sketch of the head and shoulders of the angel," with the triangle functioning as a window highlighted by white chalk and illuminated by rays from two candles positioned on a plate in the left corner.
