Basel

We open on the 8th November when we had a William Burroughs evening. Normally these consist of myself, Luzius Martin, and, quite frequently, Udo Breger, both flying in from Basel, and Terry Wilson who lives in Notting Hill. However, this time it was Jim Pennington and Annette, joined by Demi Raven and Janet from Oregon whom I met for the first time. As one of them was a vegetarian, so I thought, I attempted a cauliflower in coconut sauce dish which got a bit overdone as the wine flowed. I am always astonished at the depth of knowledge displayed by these Burroughs scholars, and it was great to finally meet Demi, whose work I have known for the long time. Jim, inevitably, produced an antique Polaroid camera to record the event but the results were a bit dark. I thought they went out of production decades ago so maybe the film was out of date. Fortunately, I remembered to take a few shots with my I-phone: L to R: Jim, Annette, Janet, Demi.

The next event to record was Mina’s birthday on the 12th which we celebrated in the traditional manner. Theo found some Happy Birthday candles and here they are in use.

On the 14th, Hélène Leroy came to dinner. She holds the wonderful title of Conservatrice en chef, Responsable des collections at the Musée d’art modern de Paris, and was over to install and check on the condition of the Dreamachine that Tate Modern had borrowed for their Electric Dreams show which opened a week later. It was great to see her and catch up on her news. The long-promised Collaboration show of Burroughs and Gysin at the MAM is now a Gysin show and will open in 2026. I hope I’m still alive. Brion Gysin left the MAM almost 500 pictures as well as a collection of Mss and archive material in his will, but no-one did anything much with it – except for requested loans – until Hélène joined them and she is now actively promoting the material. The new Tate show has a room devoted to Brion with the Dreamachine (his preferred spelling) and a vitrine featuring his collaborations with Burroughs. I made chorizo-stuffed squid for her.

On the Saturday Jill and I went to the Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo show at the RA. It is amazing to think of these three great artists meeting together, on the 25th of January, 1504, in Firenze to discuss where to install Michelangelo’s ‘David’.  Sadly, British collectors opted for the School of Venice rather than Firenze so there are few examples of this trio’s work in Britain and the major ones; The Taddei Tondo – Michelangelo’s only sculpture in Britian – and Leonardo’s Burlington House Cartoon are both very well-known. Nonetheless, it’s a superb show. Even the king let them borrow some of his Leonardo drawings. 

As we were there, we had a look at ‘Flaming June’, Lord Leighton’s best known work, on loan until 12 January 2025 from the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, who picked it up for $140 at auction in the Sixties. It is the subject of many a poster in a student bedsit though I always thought the frame was a bit too much like a proscenium arch – or like looking through the keyhole of an elaborate doorway. Victorian porn really.

I had only been back in London from Algeciras for two weeks before I set off again, this time for Basel, Switzerland – and this time on business. I travelled with Terry Wilson. We were going for the launch of Severed Due Stations, his book of cut-up collages which coincided with an exhibition of more of the same at Gallery Ann Mazzotti. I was also going to sign the signed, limited editions of the Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive II that my friend Luzius Martin was about to publish. We also needed to discuss plans for a number of future Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville projects. It was going to be a busy trip. LHR was sunny when we left but as we neared Basel the captain warned of problems ahead. Basel airport had just closed and would not open again until they had snowploughed the runway. We circled the city for an hour. The typical British Airways captain was hearty and jovial about it, ‘We’ve got plenty of fuel,’ and in fact he brought the plane down in about the most perfect landing possible with no shuddering, flapping or final bump. It was an Airbus, and I prefer them to a Boeing any day for landings. Luzius was still waiting for us even though we were an hour late and, again, fortuitously, we found a cab just as they announced the last bus before the Basel bus service stopped because the roads were unsafe with ice. This was not normal weather, but I had to admit it was beautiful, once seen through a window with a glass of wine in hand. Here are Terry and Udo in Luzius’s restaurant.

They have quite a set up there. I had expected to be staying a few doors, or even streets away, but in fact the entire Basel cut-up conspiracy is neatly stacked in the one building. Luzius and Sairung have a Thai restaurant on the ground floor serving high-end Chanthaburi dishes that is used extensively by the art trade, particularly during the Art Fair. Sairung is a spectacular chef and the restaurant is named after her as she was so well known from other Thai restaurants in Basel that a Chez Sairung made sense. She and Luzius live on the floor above the restaurant. I stayed on the third floor which is rented to a friend of theirs. On the fourth-floor lives Udo Breger, and on the top two floors there are students. This means the wide staircase is filled with art and bits and pieces from the flats and everybody knows each other. It’s a warm, friendly building. It was great to be able to just go upstairs every morning to have breakfast with Udo, an old friend whom I have known for 51 years, having first met him at Bill Burroughs’ flat in London. Udo’s Expanded Media Editions published several of Bill’s books back then.

Basel remained exceptionally cold and the pavements were treacherous as they had not been cleaned of snow and ice. I was not dressed for below zero weather and the slow progress along the pavements meant that it took three times as long as usual to get anywhere. We walked to the art gallery but the three hour private view was marred by the gallery being very, very cold. However, they had sold some of Terry’s work so that was good. Afterwards there was a dinner in a much warmer room: long table with candles, wine and good food which cheered us all up no end. 

It was a nice neighbourhood, with a Turkish restaurant across the street that made wonderful spicy soup, a large coffee shop around the corner filled with young people on their computers and, at certain times, young women with children, and just down the street the Café Flore, a bar based on the Paris original. Nothing like it, of course, but the owner was a friend of Luzius. As you can see, le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé.

I naturally wanted to see the Kunstmuseum again as I remembered it as the most important museum in Switzerland with its huge collection of Holbein, Brueghel, Rembrandt, as well as Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Manet. They have a lot of Picassos, a lot of Leger and a room and a half of Giacomettis including ‘Woman with Her Throat Cut’ (1932) that I’d just been reading about in Michael Peppiatt’s evocative Giacometti in Paris and here properly displayed on the floor as intended. It is a wonderful collection, far better than that of the Tate or the National Gallery. I wish I’d had time to see their new building and their late twentieth century collection which I’m told has a very good Helen Frankenthaler, one of my favourite artists. One of the weirdest things there was a painting of John the Baptist (1505) from the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci which resembles nothing less than the Mona Lisa, if she cocked her head to her right in the manner of classical madonnas. One of his campest works, it would not have left his studio without his approval.

Next day we took the streetcar out to the Fondation Beyeler which is in the nearby village of Riehen. Fortunately, the streetcar took us door-to-door. It’s a Renzo Piano building, one of his best, and apparently is the most visited museum in Switzerland. The Matisse show: Invitation to the Voyage, is a retrospective of 70 of his most important works spread over ten rooms. I knew most of them but there were some surprises. ‘La fenetre ouverte’, painted in Collioure in 1905, for example which I’d not seen before. In the 90s, Rosemary and I used to stay in a friend’s apartment next door to the building where Matisse painted this view of the harbour, and the living room was on the same level as his studio so the view was virtually identical. It is a superb show, with not a dud in it, open until 26 January 2025. Well worth the trip.

Luzius and I spent a few hours signing the special editions of the Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive II. Back in April 1972, William Burroughs wrote asking me for my help in finding a buyer for his archive. I agreed but pointed out that it would need to be described before anyone was likely to make an offer. The first volume of this description was the result; published in 1973 in a small edition of only 226 copies, it now goes for huge sums of money, if you can find a copy at all. The original archive is now in the New York Public Library, available to one and all. Before its description was published, our search for missing parts of Bill’s archive had revealed a great many manuscripts and related papers that I expected would become part of the archive, but through a complicated set of events, they were mostly sold off to the trade or to other collectors. Subsequent years saw more material come to light and this second volume is a bibliographical catalogue of at least some of the missing Mss. It is in a slightly larger edition of 400 copies, including a number of signed copies. It is designed as a uniform edition with the first volume. Here’s a picture that Udo Breger took of the two volumes – new volume on the right – before I came over to sign the new one.

I rarely spend a lot of time in all-male company, tending to prefer the company of women, but this visit to Basel was great. Over the years Luzius, Udo and Terry have become very good friends, good drinking buddies and fun to be with. Seeing them together was not exactly like seeing the Clash together in one room, but there was a sense of comradery that I rarely experience. Of course, we all have a shared interest in Burroughs, Gysin, cut-ups and the like which helps. While living in New York in the seventies, Bill Burroughs proposed forming a ‘League of Grey Gentlemen’, who, like him would be armed to the teeth and form a vigilante group against muggers and bad hombres. Fortunately it never happened, but for a fleeting moment, while waiting for a streetcar in Basel with the other guys, I saw us right there.