William S. Burroughs Shows You How to Make “Shotgun Art”

It’s no secret that William S. Bur­roughs liked guns. He’s shot both Shake­speare and him­self in effi­gy, and in a bizarre and trag­ic acci­dent, he shot and killed his wife. In addi­tion to shoot­ing at peo­ple, he also shot at spray paint cans to cre­ate abstract paint­ings, known as “shot­gun art.” His paint­ings have appeared in gal­leries and one of them, once owned by Tim­o­thy Leary, was auc­tioned off a few years ago on Ebay. In the film above (date unknown), watch Bur­roughs in action with a rifle. He described the process in an inter­view with Gre­go­ry Ego:

There is no exact process. If you want to do shot­gun art, you take a piece of ply­wood, put a can of spray paint in front of it, and shoot it with a shot­gun or high pow­ered rifle. The paint’s under high pres­sure so it explodes! Throws the can 300 feet. The paint sprays in explod­ing col­or across your sur­face. You can have as many col­ors as you want. Turn it around, do it side­ways, and have one col­or com­ing in from this side and this side. Of course, they hit. Mix in all kinds of unpre­dictable pat­terns. This is relat­ed to Pol­lack­’s drip can­vas­es, although this is a rather more basi­cal­ly ran­dom process, there’s no pos­si­bil­i­ty of pre­dict­ing what pat­terns you’re going to get.

This is, admit­ted­ly, a very lo-fi film. It appears to have been shot on super‑8, and about two thirds of the way through, the cam­era flips upside down, then seems to have been tossed into a car. The sound goes out, and the last minute cap­tures a cloud-strewn Kansans sky speed­ing by in silence. It’s a strange and cap­ti­vat­ing piece of found art that, like Bur­roughs’ work, con­tains casu­al vio­lence, odd per­spec­tives, herky-jerky edit­ing, sud­den con­fu­sion and upheaval, and rare moments of beau­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

William S. Bur­roughs Sends Anti-Fan Let­ter to In Cold Blood Author Tru­man Capote: “You Have Sold Out Your Tal­ent”

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.