Editing Beatnik (section)

==Beat culture==
In the vernacular of the period, "Beat" referred to Beat culture, attitude and literature; while "beatnik" referred to a stereotype found in cartoon drawings and (in some cases at worst) twisted, sometimes violent media characters. In 1995, film scholar [[Ray Carney]] wrote about the authentic beat attitude as differentiated from stereotypical media portrayals of the beatnik:
<blockquote>Much of Beat culture represented a negative stance rather than a positive one. It was animated more by a vague feeling of cultural and emotional displacement, dissatisfaction, and yearning, than by a specific purpose or program ... It was many different, conflicting, shifting states of mind.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/media-resources-center|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060906034632/http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Carney.html|url-status=dead|title=Media Resources Center &#124; UC Berkeley Library|archive-date=September 6, 2006|website=Lib.berkeley.edu}}</ref></blockquote>

[[Image:Miss Beatnik of 1959 contestants.jpg|thumb|Posing before a sample of beatnik art are Miss Beatnik of 1959 contestants in Venice, California]]

Since 1958, the terms Beat Generation and Beat have been used to describe the [[Economic materialism|antimaterialistic]] literary movement that began with Kerouac in the 1940s and continued into the 1960s. The Beat philosophy of antimaterialism and soul searching influenced 1960s musicians such as [[Bob Dylan]], the early [[Pink Floyd]] and [[The Beatles]].

===Music and fashion===
However, the soundtrack of the beat movement was the modern jazz pioneered by saxophonist [[Charlie Parker]] and trumpeter [[Dizzy Gillespie]], which the media dubbed [[bebop]].  Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg spent much of their time in New York jazz clubs such as the [[Royal Roost]], [[Minton's Playhouse]], [[Birdland (jazz club)|Birdland]] and the Open Door, "shooting the breeze" and "digging the music". Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and [[Miles Davis]] rapidly became what Ginsberg dubbed "secret heroes" to this group of aesthetes. The Beat authors borrowed much from the jazz/[[Hipster (1940s subculture)|hipster]] slang of the 1940s, peppering their works with words such as "square", "cats", "cool" and "dig".

[[File:Beatboy (1).jpg|thumb|Stereotypical beatnik man]]

At the time the term "beatnik" was coined, a trend existed among young college students to adopt the stereotype. Men emulated the trademark look of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie by wearing [[goatee]]s, [[horn-rimmed glasses]] and [[beret]]s, rolling their own cigarettes, and playing [[Bongo drum|bongos]]. Fashions for women included black [[leotard]]s and long, straight, unadorned hair, in a rebellion against the middle-class culture of beauty salons. Marijuana use was associated with the subculture, and during the 1950s, [[Aldous Huxley]]'s ''[[The Doors of Perception]]'' further influenced views on drugs.

By 1960, a small "beatnik" group in [[Newquay]], Cornwall, England (including a young [[Wizz Jones]]) had attracted the attention and abhorrence of their neighbours for growing their hair beyond shoulder length, resulting in a television interview with [[Alan Whicker]] on BBC television's ''[[Tonight (1957 TV series)|Tonight]]'' series.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3WfXA9JL9w|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151118103552/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3WfXA9JL9w|url-status=dead|title=Beatniks in Newquay, 1960|archive-date=November 18, 2015|via=www.youtube.com}}</ref>

===Philosophy and religion===
{{Further|Zen boom}}
The Beat philosophy was generally countercultural and antimaterialistic, and stressed the importance of bettering one's inner self over material possessions. Some Beat writers, such as [[Gary Snyder]], began to delve into Eastern religions such as [[Buddhism]] and [[Taoism]]. Politics tended to be [[Modern liberalism in the United States|liberal]], left-wing and anti-war, with support for causes such as [[Desegregation in the United States|desegregation]] (although many of the figures associated with the original Beat movement, particularly Kerouac, embraced [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] and conservative ideas). An openness to [[African American culture]] and arts was apparent in literature and music, notably jazz. While Caen and other writers implied a connection with communism, no obvious or direct connection occurred between Beat philosophy, as expressed by the literary movement's leading authors, and that of the [[Communist|communist movement]], other than the antipathy both philosophies shared towards capitalism. Those with only a superficial familiarity with the Beat movement often saw this similarity and assumed the two movements had more in common.

The Beat movement introduced Asian religions to Western society.  These religions provided the Beat generation with new views of the world and corresponded with its desire to rebel against conservative middle-class values of the 1950s, old post-1930s radicalism, mainstream culture, and institutional religions in America.<ref name="Jackson">Carl Jackson. "The Counterculture Looks East: Beat Writers and Asian religion". ''American Studies'', Vol. 29, No. 1 (spring 1988).</ref>

By 1958, many Beat writers published writings on Buddhism. This was the year Jack Kerouac published his novel ''[[The Dharma Bums]]'', whose central character (whom Kerouac based on himself) sought Buddhist contexts for events in his life.

Allen Ginsberg's spiritual journey to India in 1963 also influenced the Beat movement. After studying religious texts alongside monks, Ginsberg deduced that what linked the function of poetry to Asian religions was their mutual goal of achieving ultimate truth. His discovery of Hindu mantra chants, a form of oral delivery, subsequently influenced Beat poetry. Beat pioneers who followed a Buddhism-influenced spiritual path felt that Asian religions offered a profound understanding of human nature and insights into the being, existence and reality of mankind.<ref name=Jackson/> Many of the Beat advocates believed that the core concepts of Asian religious philosophies had the means of elevating American society's consciousness, and these concepts informed their main ideologies.<ref name="Chand">{{cite book
  | first=Raj| last=Chandarlapaty |author-link=Raj Chandarlapaty|date=2009 |page=103 (of 180)
  | title=The Beat Generation and Counterculture: Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac
  | chapter=Part 3: Jack Kerouac, the Common "Human Story" and White-Other Historicity: Beatniks Face the Challenge of Popularizing and Humanizing Otherness
  | publisher=Peter Lang | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1izFhIgWT5kC&pg=PA103
  | isbn=978-1433106033}}
</ref>

Notable Beat writers such as Kerouac, Ginsberg, and [[Gary Snyder]] were drawn to Buddhism to the extent that they each, at different periods in their lives, followed a spiritual path in their quests to provide answers to universal questions and concepts. As a result, the Beat philosophy stressed the bettering of the inner self and the rejection of [[Economic materialism|materialism]], and postulated that East Asian religions could fill a religious and spiritual void in the lives of many Americans.<ref name=Jackson/>

Many scholars speculate that Beat writers wrote about Eastern religions to encourage young people to practice spiritual and sociopolitical action. Progressive concepts from these religions, particularly those regarding personal freedom, influenced youth culture to challenge capitalist domination, break their generation's dogmas, and reject traditional gender and racial rules.<ref name=Chand/>

===Art===
"Beatnik art" is the direction of [[contemporary art]] that originated in the United States as part of the beat movement in the 1960s.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LBUMRQAACAAJ |title=Styles, Schools and Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to Modern Art|last=Dempsey|first=Amy|date=2010|publisher=Thames & Hudson|isbn=9780500288443|language=en}}</ref> The movement itself, unlike the so-called "[[Lost Generation]]" did not set itself the task of changing society, but tried to distance itself from it, while at the same time trying to create its own counter-culture. The art created by artists was influenced by [[jazz]], drugs, [[occult]]ism, and other attributes of beat movement.<ref name=":0" />

The scope of the activity was concentrated in the cultural circles of New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and North Carolina. Prominent representatives of the trend were artists [[Wallace Berman]], [[Jay DeFeo]], [[Jess Collins]], [[Robert Frank]], [[Claes Oldenburg]] and [[Larry Rivers]].

The culture of the beat generation has become a kind of intersection for representatives of the creative intellect of the United States associated with visual and performing art, which are usually attributed to other areas and trends of artistic expression, such as [[Assemblage (art)|assemblage]], [[happening]], [[funk art]] and [[Neo-Dada]]ism. They made efforts to destroy the wall between art and real life, so that art would become a living experience in cafes or jazz clubs, and not remain the prerogative of galleries and museums. Many works of artists of the movement were created on the verge of [[Intermedia|various types of art]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xPqXMHktT0EC |title=In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O'Hara and American Art|last1=Ferguson|first1=Russell|last2=Calif.)|first2=Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles|date=January 1, 1999|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=9780520222434|language=en}}</ref>

Artists wrote poetry and poets painted, something like this can describe the processes taking place within the framework of the movement. Performances were a key element in the art of beats, whether it was the Theatrical Event of 1952 at [[Black Mountain College]] or [[Jack Kerouac]] typing in 1951 the novel ''[[On the Road]]'' on a typewriter in a single session on a single roll of 31-meter long paper.<ref name=":0" />

Representatives of the movement were united by hostility to traditional culture with its conformism and brightly degenerate commercial component. They also did not like the approach of traditional culture to hushing up the dark side of American life – violence, corruption, social inequality, racism. They tried through art to create a new way of life based on the ideals of rebellion and freedom.<ref name=":0" />

Critics highlight the artist [[Wallace Berman]] as the main representative of the movement. In his work concentrated many of the characteristic features of hipsters, especially in his collages made on photocopied photographs, which are a mixture of elements of pop art and mysticism. Among other artists and works, one can single out the work ''The Rose'' by the artist [[Jay DeFeo]], the work on which was carried out for seven years, a huge painting-assembly weighing about a ton with a width of up to 20 centimeters.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://kulturologia.ru/blogs/160313/18068/|title=Весомое замечание: самая монументальная в мире картина маслом от Jay DeFeo|website=Kulturologia.ru|access-date=2019-09-19}}</ref>