Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/603573
232 CULTURED onsider this word cloud: Fernand Léger, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, the 16-millimeter film "Sleep," Robert Rauschenberg, Tibetan Buddhism, Jasper Johns, Taylor Mead, Dial-A-Poem, Meredith Monk, Giorno Poetry Systems, LSD, the Moog Synthesizer, Robert Wilson, Patti Smith, Keith Haring, Laurie Anderson, "The Third Mind," Twyla Tharp, the Minnesota punk band Hüsker Dü, the French artist Pierre Huyghe, the Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, Michael Stipe and the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone. There's only one person who could tie all that together: John Giorno. Turning 79 in December, Giorno is a New York poet, silk screen artist, performer and Buddhist/lover/wise man, whose colorful life includes his home for more than 50 years (222 Bowery, a former Y.M.C.A. and home to artists such as William S. Burroughs), the men he's had sex with and written about (many), the poets and performance artists (like Patti Smith and Laurie Anderson) he has recorded in his Giorno Poetry Systems, the avant-garde artists and musicians he has befriended and inspired, including Michael Stipe, who filmed Giorno for a video of R.E.M.'s last single, "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" and his partner for 18 years, Rondinone. "People have spoken about John in the '60s, in the '70s, in the '80s, in the '90s and 2000s," Rondinone says. "All in a different way." Rondinone, whose rainbow-colored Hell,Yes! sign adorned the New Museum in New York, is a celebrated artist in his own right. At the Gladstone Gallery in New York, Rondinone's work ranges from delicate ink drawings, to a sizeable wax nude, neon wordplay, abstract acrylics, smiling bronze heads and a stone sculpture so primitive it seems to predate the Venus of Willendorf. At the Sadie Coles HQ gallery in London, Rondinone's recent show called "clouds + mountains + waterfalls" consisted of colorful towers, aluminum-cast sculptures and cloud-shaped canvases with titles that look like a cat rolled onto a keyboard: ersterjulizweitausendundfünfzehn, 2015. In the last three years he has had solo shows in Shanghai, Vienna, Tel Aviv, Chicago and Berlin, among "UGO RONDINONE : I ♥ JOHN GIORNO" at Palais de Tokyo in Paris C