William S. Burroughs. Courtesy of Stellan Holm Gallery.

Stellan Holm Gallery
524 W. 24th St.
New York, NY 10011

The cult of personality that still clings to the early counter-culture provocateurs of the 1950s is in full swing at Stellan Holm Gallery, showing the late paintings, shotgun blasts, sketches and ephemera of junkie-beat-novelist hero William S. Burroughs.

There are some works of abstract beauty on display, especially in a few of the dark canvasses and textual paintings, and like everything else that Burroughs touched in the latter part of his life, it's all swaddled in a blanket of cool.

Of all the pieces, the shotgun paintings–effectively large blocks of wood shot with a 12-gauge–evoke most fully the sense of gallows humor that pervades much of Burroughs' written work, and they serve as a fitting homage to the mystique that helped to make him an anti-hero to generations.

Rub Out The Word by William S. Burroughs is showing at Stellan Holm Gallery until March 29th.

Jonathan Shieber