Global Context • 1958
Playing on the word Sputnik (a continued fixation of the American press), Herb Caen coins the term 'Beatnik' in a San Francisco Chronicle column to describe the increasing number of Beat enthusiasts populating San Francisco. The term became the popular label for a new (and imminently commodifiable) stereotype of men with goatees and berets playing bongos while free-spirited women dance in black unitards.
An entry from the timeline included in the exhibition Dada South? Experimentation, Radicalism and Resistance (2009–2010) at the Iziko National Gallery, which proposed connections between art production in South Africa and abroad against the social and political contexts that framed them. A revised version of this timeline was later featured in the retroactive Flight Paths (2011) exhibition guide commissioned by Clare Butcher.