Gelett Burgess

Gelett Burgess (January 30, 1866 - September 18, 1951) was an artist, art critic, poet, author, and humorist.

It is reported that he lost his job as a drafting instructor at the University of California, Berkeley 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!

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.