After studying at Columbia University, he moved to the Bowery, joining that neighborhoods’ vibrant artistic community. It was there that he met Andy Warhol, who shot footage of him sleeping for his first film, Sleep. John Giorno’s collaborators have included William S. Burroughs, Robert Rauschenberg, Patti Smith, Philip Glass, Robert Mapplethorpe and, more recently, Elizabeth Peyton, Pierre Huyghe and Ugo Rondinone. In 1965, Giorno founded Giorno Poetry Systems, an artists’ collective and record label, to relay poetry to a wider audience using innovative means of communication. One such innovation was Dial-A-Poem, which, since 1968, has continuously allowed access to anyone who wishes to hear poetry readings over the phone. John Giorno is also a pioneer of performance poetry, intense spoken word events performed before a live audience. In the 1980s, Giorno begins to add a pictorial dimension to his work, creating Poem Paintings composed of words and phrases from his poems in the form of paintings, murals, drawings and screen prints.

Founded in 1926 by Christian Zervos at 14, rue du Dragon in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Cahiers d’Art encompasses a publishing house, a gallery, and a revue. The Cahiers d’Art Revue was entirely unique when it was introduced, and it still is: a revue of contemporary art defined by its combination of striking typography and layout, abundant photography, and juxtaposition of ancient and modern art. Between the 1920s and the mid-1970s, Cahiers d’Art published ninety-seven issues of the Revue and more than fifty books on fine art and architecture, as well as the thirty-three volume catalogue raisonné of Pablo Picasso. After its acquisition and relaunch in 2012 by Staffan Ahrenberg, an editorial board comprised of Sam Keller, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Isabela Mora, and Staffan Ahrenberg was created. Cahiers d’Art has since published several new Revues and art books devoted to Ellsworth Kelly, Rosemarie Trockel, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Thomas Schütte, Gabriel Orozco, Joan Miró, Lucas Arruda, Ai Weiwei, Arthur Jafa, Frank Gehry, Christo, and others. From the 1920s till today, Cahiers d’Art has maintained a gallery, exhibiting the artists it publishes. Cahiers d’Art continues to fulfill its mission to be the cultural bridge between the avant-garde of Picasso, Duchamp, and Le Corbusier, and the leading artists and architects of our time.