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‘Nick Rhodes’ Art Attack’: Duran Duran’s stylish keyboardist gives fans a tour of modern art, 1985
06.09.2016
05:04 pm
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We already knew that Nick Rhodes, one of the founding members of Duran Duran, is a sensitive and creative individual. Few events are as aesthetically hyper-charged as his 1984 wedding to Iowa heiress Julie Anne Friedman.

So perhaps it was inevitable, given how many teenybopper magazines the members of Duran Duran appeared in between 1981 and 1987, that someone would have the bright idea to stick Rhodes in a museum and get some quick reactions to the various pieces of art. Which a magazine called Star Hits did in late 1985—between Seven and the Ragged Tiger and Notorious; this would have been a prime Arcadia phase.

When I first saw the pics of Rhodes holding or positioned near various artifacts from the 1980s art scene, I was momentarily sure that they must represent Rhodes discussing artworks he had bought. Alas, no. They put him in a museum and got a few quotes, that’s all.

The feature was called “Making an Exhibition of Himself” and appeared (I am pretty sure this is what happened) in the November 1985 issue of Star Hits and then was repurposed in the January 1-14 1986 issue of Smash Hits, which was a look back at 1985. Rhodes explains that when he was growing up in Birmingham he would visit the Ikon Gallery and look at the art. There’s no mention of where these photographs were taken or what the show was called, except to say that it was “a recent exhibition of young American artists.”
 

 
Let’s examine the four artists who unexpectedly found themselves featured in a music magazine aimed at teenagers.

Mike Cockrill and Judge Hughes were pop art collaborators from 1982 to 1987; here is a a broader spectrum of their output. Nancy Dwyer is a scultpor who often does larger pieces with a typographical element, as in her 1990 poly-coated nylon work “Big Ego.” Lady Pink is often called “the first lady of graffiti” for her unusual position as a woman in the graffiti world with a large body of work; she had the lead role in the 1983 film Wild Style and collaborated with Jenny Holzer on a poster series.

The strangest artist of the bunch is Mike Bidlo, whose career has flirted with outright plagiarism more than once. Bidlo once executed a series of paintings using the same media that Jackson Pollock used and called it “Not Pollock.” He reproduced a large number of Picasso paintings and called the show Picasso’s Women, 1901-71. He saved his most ambitious idea for the master of appropriation, Andy Warhol himself. In 1984 he re-created Warhol’s Factory on the top floor of PS 1 and enlisted friends to imitate various of Warhol’s hangers-on, with Bidlo himself occupying the role of the white-haired master. If you click on his artnet profile you see, among other items, a painting of a Brillo box and a silk-screen-style painting of Jackie O alongside several treatments of a Duchamp-ian urinal.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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06.09.2016
05:04 pm
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Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes and his cavity-inducing, bubblegum-colored totally 80s wedding
04.08.2016
09:53 am
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Nick Rhodes and Julie Anne Friedman photographed at their art deco themed wedding, 1984
Nick Rhodes and Julie Anne Friedman photographed at their art deco themed wedding, 1984.
 
I don’t know about you, but just looking at these photos of Nick Rhodes (the keyboardist for Duran Duran) all dolled up for his 1984 wedding to model and Iowa department store heir, Julie Anne Friedman, gave me both a cavity and a contact high.
 
Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran and his then wife, Julie Anne Friedman on their wedding day, 1984
Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran and his then-wife, Julie Anne Friedman on their wedding day, August, 18th, 1984.
 
Drawn together by their mutual love of music, Andy Warhol and apparently lipstick, the pair met when Rhodes was only 20, and when Friedman was a mere 23. Friedman’s wealthy folks loved Rhodes as they were under the impression that their new son-in-law didn’t do drugs and enjoyed a good game of Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble. Which was about as far away from the truth as you could get back in Duran Duran’s heyday, an era that was routinely full of liver-killing champagne, cognac and cocaine parties.

Warhol himself was a huge fan of Duran Duran and according to vocalist Simon Le Bon, had a bit of a crush on Nick Rhodes (of whom Warhol writes rather extensively about in his diaries—once confessing to UK magazine The Face that he masturbated while watching Rhodes in Duran Duran’s videos. You know, just like the rest of us). Here’s an excerpt from Warhol’s diary that recalls the occasion when Nick brought his then-girlfriend Julie Anne to meet meet the Pop of Pop:

Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran came to the office and bought his girlfriend Julie Anne. He’s twenty and she’s twenty three. He was wearing twice as much makeup as she was, although he is half as tall.

The pair were married in a ceremony in London, which Warhol did not attend as he didn’t care much for traveling. He did however send along a little wedding present—an original piece of artwork with the inscription, “To Nick and Julie, love Andy ‘84’.” Rhodes and Friedman divorced in 1992 and in 2014, Friedman auctioned off the wedding gift from Warhol (much to the apparent displeasure of Rhodes who had gotten the bulk of their large art collection when they split) for $149,000. More photos from the wedding and Andy’s wedding gift follow, as well as footage from Nick Rhodes’ interview segment with Warhol on Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes in 1985.
 
Nick Rhodes in his pink tuxedo at his wedding to Julie Anne Friedman, August 18th, 1984
 
Nick Rhodes and Julie Anne Friedman at their wedding, August 18th 1984
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.08.2016
09:53 am
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Debbie Harry, Ramones, Nick Rhodes, Courtney Love and more on MTV’s ‘Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes’


 
In December of 2010, I visited the Andy Warhol Enterprises exhibit then being held at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It was an excellent full-career retrospective, loaded with rare goodies, and generously tilted toward his early, pre-Factory commercial work, which I prefer to his more famous silkscreens (commence calling for my skull on a pike, I don’t care). But as much as I was enjoying the early books and the blotted-ink drawings of shoes, I was surprised by a trip down amnesia lane that came at the end of the exhibit, a video installation of one of Warhol’s last projects, the show he produced and co-hosted (with Debbie Harry) for MTV called Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes. The name of the show referred to Warhol’s famous quip “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Episodes of the program were actually 30 minutes in length. #themoreyouknow
 

Warhol with Debbie Harry, dressed by Stephen Sprouse.
 
I was an arty kid, so I knew perfectly well who Warhol was (some of my friends only learned of his existence from that show, believe it or not), and so I never missed it. Though it wasn’t too hard to catch them all—as the series was prematurely ended by Warhol’s 1987 death, there were only five episodes, the last of which was mainly a memorial. But while it was on, it was glorious. Although the program featured lots of marquee names, befitting Warhol’s obsession with celebrity and celebrities, it also highlighted NYC downtown fashion, art, and music phenomena. Mind-expanding stuff for a midwestern kid, and stuff which would have otherwise been entirely inaccessible, since Warhol’s previous television ventures, Fashion and Andy Warhol’s TV, were limited to NYC cable.

And unless you visit the Warhol Museum or a traveling retrospective, the program itself is now pretty well inaccessible. Few things have been more damnably hard to find streaming than episodes of 15 Minutes, and to my complete bafflement, the Warhol Museum store doesn’t offer a home video. Much of what little can be found is fuzzy VHS home recordings, but it gives an adequate taste of how deep the show could go—and remember, this was on MTV.
 

 

 
It gets a good bit better with this clip of Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes taking the viewer on a tour of Manhattan nightclubs The Palladium and AREA (note future Twin Peaks actor Michael J. Anderson as the garden gnome.)
 

 
KONK were an amazing dance-punk band of the era. You may recognize the drummer, Richard Edson, an original member of Sonic Youth, and co-star of the Jim Jarmusch film Stranger Than Paradise.
 

 
This Ramones interview ends with a live, not lip-synced, performance of “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg.”

 
The last bit footage I’ve found is a jaw-dropper—an interview segment with a 21ish, pre-fame Courtney Love!
 

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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06.25.2014
09:49 am
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