Between the looming cold war and the lack of an audience, there was little evident future for their work, which was made, like music, for the moment and for their fellow artists. They were remarkable for their commitment to work for its own sake, and their history is littered with abandoned and destroyed pieces, ephemeral gestures, and unstable materials. They established an idea of success that has everything to do with the caliber of one's acts and nothing to do with recognition, though some of them eventually became successes on both counts.

- Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965, Whitney Museum of American Art