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Frank Gelett Burgess (January 30, 1866 - September 18, 1951) was an artist, art critic, poet, author, and humorist. He graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a B.S., in 1887.
It is reported that he lost his job as a drafting instructor at the University of California, Berkeley (1891-1894) because of unmentionable alterations of statues of Henry Cogswell, a famous Bay Area dentist who had donated several statues of himself to the city of San Francisco, California.
He is most famous for writing the poem Purple Cow (in 1895):
- I never saw a purple cow,
- I never hope to see one;
- But I can tell you, anyhow,
- I'd rather see than be one!
Having become inextricably linked with this verse, he wrote the following Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue: - Ah yes, I wrote The Purple Cow,
- I'm sorry now I wrote it;
- But I can tell you, anyhow,
- I'll kill you if you quote it!
He also wrote and illustrated several children's books about the habits of strange, baldheaded, idiosyncratic childlike creatures he called "The Goops" -- sort of a dark humor take on Miss Manners.
Of Queen Anne architecture he wrote:
- "It should have a conical corner tower; it should be built of at least three incongruous materials or, better, imitations thereof; it should have its window openings absolutely haphazard; it should represent parts of every known and unknown order of architecture; it should be so plastered with ornament as to conceal the theory of its construction. It should be a restless, uncertain, frightful collection of details giving the effect of a nightmare about to explode."
An influential article by Burgess The Wild Men of Paris, (Architectural Record, May 1910), was the first introduction of cubist art in the United States. The article was drawn from interviews with Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque.
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