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Bob Dylan’s ‘screen test’ at Andy Warhol’s Factory, 1965
04.10.2012
01:26 pm
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Dylan, Warhol and Elvis, photo by Nat Finkelstein

Famous visitors and “beautiful people” with “star potential” who visited Andy Wahol’s Factory studio in the 1960s were often shot for Warhol’s “screen tests,” his silent “parodies” of the Hollywood studio system. No one was really auditioning for anything, it was just an excuse to run a single reel of 16mm film through his Bolex camera and engage someone in a staring contest with it, one they normally lost (after a minute or so of trying to look “cool,” the mask was normally dropped and the simple portraits become quite revealing). The two and a half minute reels were then slowed down and printed.

Some of the more notable subjects included Italian model Benedetta Barzini, model/actrress Marisa Berenson, poet Ted Berrigan, Salvador Dalí, Donovan, Marcel Duchamp, Mama Cass, Allen Ginsberg, Beck’s mother, Bibbe Hansen, Baby Jane Holzer, Dennis Hopper, actress Sally Kirkland, Nico, Yoko Ono, Lou Reed, photographer Francesco Scavullo, Edie Sedgwick, Susan Sontag, artist Paul Thek, Viva and Mary Woronov

When Dylan stopped by the tin-foil covered Factory, he is alleged to have taken an immediate dislike to Warhol and the “phonies” of his entourage. It has long been suspected that the spitting lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone,” in part, describe Dylan’s feelings about Warhol—was he “the diplomat on the chrome horse”?—and how he felt about the artist’s perceived exploitation of Edie Sedgwick, who Dylan was at one point romantically involved with (and who was his muse for some of Blonde on Blonde).

After the screen test was shot, Dylan grabbed a large silkscreen (as “payment”) that Warhol was going to give him anyway and headed for the door (before allegedly strapping the canvas to the roof of a station wagon). Such was his dislike of the artist that he later traded the piece to his manager, Albert Grossman, for a couch. That silkscreen, “Double Elvis,” is now part of the permanent collection at MOMA.

Here’s Factory photographer Nat Finkelstein’s account of what happened:

“Andy gave Bobby a great double image of Elvis. Bobby gave Andy short shrift. Shooting and plundering finished, the Dylan gang headed for the door, me and my Nikon on their heels. They left as they had entered…‘Bobby the Waif’ emerging as ‘Robert the Triumphant’. They departed having tied the Elvis image to the top of their station wagon, like a deer poached out of season. Much later, Bobby told me he’d traded the Elvis (now worth millions) to his manager Albert Grossman for a couch!”

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.10.2012
01:26 pm
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Rub Out The Words: New collection of William S. Burroughs letters out this week
02.01.2012
03:38 pm
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Editor Bill Morgan cataloged William S. Burroughs’ correspondence from the early 1960s through the mid-70s, selecting over three hundred letters for Rub Out the Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1959-1974, out this week from Ecco.

The material in this new volume covers an era that sprints from Beat to hippie to punk rather quickly. Some of the recipients of Burroughs’ letters at this time were Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, Gregory Corso, Billy Burroughs Jr., Paul Bowles, Ian Sommerville, Alexander Trocchi and Brion Gysin.

Here’s one letter, sent to author Norman Mailer. Mailer had written to Burroughs requesting that he join the anti-war tax resistance protest against the Vietnam War.

Via the Paris Review’s website:

November 20, 1967
8 Duke Street
St James
London S.W.1
England

Dear Norman,

As regards the War Tax Protest if I started protesting and refus­ing to contribute to all the uses of tax money of which I disap­ prove: Narcotics Department, FBI, CIA, any and all expenditures for nuclear weapons, in fact any expenditures to keep the antiquated idea of a nation on its dying legs, I would wind up refusing to pay one cent of taxes, which would lead to more trouble than I am pre­ pared to cope with or to put it another way I feel my first duty is to keep myself in an operating condition. In short I sympathize but must abstain.

all the best,

William Burroughs

The volume is set for a February 7 publication date. You can pre-order a copy of Rub Out the Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1959-1974 at Amazon.

The cover portrait of Burroughs is a Polaroid shot by Andy Warhol. Below, some undated footage of Burroughs and Warhol dining together sometime in the late 70s, or more likely early 1980s that was used in a BBC documentary about the Chelsea Hotel. The voice heard off-camera belongs to Victor Bockris, author of the classic book With William Burroughs: A Report From the Bunker and Warhol: The Biography.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.01.2012
03:38 pm
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Dear Me: Diaries and those who keep them
01.31.2012
08:46 pm
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It’s around this time that the enthusiasm started almost a month ago begins to wane, and the pages of the diary remain blank, as days dissolve into weeks. Keeping a diary is hard work, but it is rewarding work. If you’ve started a diary and want a little encouragement to keep going, or even just to start writing, then here is a personal selection of diary and journal writers, who may inspire.
 
Sylvia Plath kept a diary throughout her life, which reveals a world beyond her poetry. Here is Sylvia setting out on her adventures as a writer, from November 13th 1949.

As of today I have decided to keep a diary again - just a place where I can write my thoughts and opinions when I have a moment. Somehow I have to keep and hold the rapture of being seventeen. Every day is so precious I feel infinitely sad at the thought of all this time melting farther and farther away from me as I grow older. Now, now is the perfect time of my life.

In reflecting back upon these last sixteen years, I can see tragedies and happiness, all relative - all unimportant now - fit only to smile upon a bit mistily.

I still do not know myself. Perhaps I never will. But I feel free – unbound by responsibility, I still can come up to my own private room, with my drawings hanging on the walls…and pictures pinned up over my bureau. It is a room suited to me – tailored, uncluttered and peaceful…I love the quiet lines of the furniture, the two bookcases filled with poetry books and fairy tales saved from childhood.
At the present moment I am very happy, sitting at my desk, looking out at the bare trees around the house across the street… Always want to be an observer. I want to be affected by life deeply, but never so blinded that I cannot see my share of existence in a wry, humorous light and mock myself as I mock others.

 
Playwright Joe Orton filled his diaries with his sexual escapades, and vignettes of the strangeness of the world, from January 18th 1967.

On the bus going home I heard a most fascinating conversation between an old man and woman. “What a thing, though,” the old woman said. “You’d hardly credit it.” “She’s always made a fuss of the whole family, but never me,” the old man said. “Does she have a fire when the young people go to see her?” “Fire?” “She won’t get people seeing her without warmth.” “I know why she’s doing it. Don’t think I don’t,” the old man said. “My sister she said to me, ‘I wish I had your easy life.’ Now that upset me. I was upset by the way she phrased herself. ‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ I said. ‘I’ve only got to get on the phone and ring a certain number,’ I said, ‘to have you stopped.’” “Yes,” the old woman said, “And you can, can’t you?” “Were they always the same?” she said. “When you was a child? Can you throw yourself back? How was they years ago?” “The same,” the old man said. “Wicked, isn’t it?” the old woman said. “Take care, now” she said, as the old man left her. He didn’t say a word but got off the bus looking disgruntled.

 
More diaries from Jack Kerouac, Emily Carr, John Cheever, and Andy Warhol, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.31.2012
08:46 pm
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Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1986
01.26.2012
12:38 pm
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”It was like some crazy-art world marriage and they were the odd couple. The relationship was symbiotic. Jean-Michel thought he needed Andy’s fame, and Andy thought he needed Jean-Michel’s new blood. Jean Michel gave Andy a rebellious image again.”

—Warhol’s longtime studio assistant Ronny Cutrone quoted in Warhol: The Biography by Victor Bockris,

 
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German art dealer Bruno Bischofberger explains how the collaboration came to happen and his own role in setting it up:

In the autumn of 1982 I brought Jean-Michel to Andy Warhol in the Factory and this is how they really got to know each other. I had a firm agreement with Warhol that I could propose younger artists which I found interesting for an article in Interview Magazine, which we had founded together in 1969. Warhol also let me decide which young artists I could bring with me to the Factory to have a portrait done, in exchange for which they could swap one of their works. Warhol trusted my judgement and it was of no consequence that the works that he received in exchange were often worth much less than his portraits. In this way Andy established a relationship with the generation of younger artists. When I told him that I would bring Jean-Michel Basquiat for a portrait session and the usual buffet lunch at the Factory on Union Square the next day he seemed rather surprised and asked me„ Do you really think that Basquiat is such an important artist?“ Warhol was not familiar with Basquiat‘s new work and told me that he remembered having met the artist on one or two occasions, on both of which Warhol had felt him to be too forward. Basquiat had been trying to get to know Warhol and had offered him his street sale art, small drawings on paper that Warhol had been very sceptical of.

Warhol photographed Basquiat with his special Polaroid portrait camera. Jean-Michel asked Warhol whether he could also take a photo of him, took some shots and then asked me to take some photos of him and Warhol together. We then wanted to go next door to have the customary cold buffet lunch. Basquiat did not want to stay and said goodbye. We had hardly finished lunch, one, at most one and half an hour later, when Basquiat‘s assistant appeared with a 150 x 150 cm (60 x 60“) work on canvas, still completely wet, a double portrait depicting Warhol and Basquiat: Andy on the left in his typical pose resting his chin on his hand, and Basquiat on the right with the wild hair that he had at the time. The painting was titled Dos Cabezas. The assistant had run the ten to fifteen blocks from Basquiat‘s studio on Crosby Street to the Factory on Union Square with the painting in his hands because it wouldn‘t fit into a taxi.

All visitors and employees at the Factory flocked around to see the painting, which was admired by all. Most astonished of all was Andy who said: “I‘m really jealous - he is faster than me.“ Soon thereafter Warhol made a portrait of Basquiat on several equally large canvases: Basquiat sporting his wild hairdo, silkscreened on the background of the “oxidation“ type, the same as the Oxidation or Piss Paintings of 1978. Basquiat subsequently painted another two portraits of Warhol. One in 1984 entitled Brown Spots, which depicts Andy as a banana, and the other in 1984-85 which shows Warhol with glasses and large white wig working out with a barbell in each hand.

Basquiat and I soon started to speak of Francesco Clemente as the third artist for the collaborations project and we decided together to invite him to join in, after having pondered Julian Schnabel as an alternative. First, of course, we wanted to know whether Warhol would agree to do the project.

Jean-Michel knew and respected Clemente, whose studio was only two blocks away from Jean-Michels. In the following years he became great friends with him and his wife Alba. He also knew Schnabel well, and for quite some time, and was very impressed by his work and his success. Basquiat decided not to approach Schnabel with the collaboration project because, as he explained to me, he felt that an artist like Schnabel, with his strong, dominating personality, could not have prevented himself from influencing or commenting upon the work of the other collaborating artists. Basquiat, as a black in New York, was over-sensitive to other artist‘s comments on his work. He told me that he was once insulted, in my opinion wrongly, when Schnabel, as a response to the question how he found a work of Basquiats which both were looking at, gave what Basquiat considered to be a too critical answer, but which was surely meant by Julian to be no more than a constructive suggestion.

Clemente had, in the summer of 1983, painted a group of twelve large paintings in Skowhegan, Maine, which I was able to purchase from him and which are also a sort of collaboration. He stretched fragments of painted theatre backdrops made of cloth on stretchers and added his own inventions to those already there. Schnabel had also, early on his career, painted on surfaces that had a clearly defined structure, in a sort of collaboration. In 1986 he painted a series of Japanese Kabuki theatre backdrops, and Enzo Cucchi also painted on four Italian theatre backdrops in 1987.

To get the most spontaneous work into the collaborations I suggested to Basquiat that every artist should, without conferring with the others about iconography, style, size, technique, etc., independently start the paintings, of course in the knowledge that two further artists would be working on the same canvas, and that enough mental and physical space should be left to accommodate them. I further suggested to him that each artist send one half of the started collaborations to each of the other artists and the works then be passed on to the remaining artist whose work was still missing. Basquiat liked my proposal and agreed.

Read more at Bruno Bischofberger.com
 
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Above, Warhol rendered as banana in Basquait’s “Brown Spots,” 1984.
 
I was actually at the opening of their collaboration at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1985. It was a great party. I was nineteen and thrilled to be there.

An interview with Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, from the UK documentary series, State of the Art.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Long Lost Footage of Musical Play by John Phillips, Produced by Andy Warhol (1975)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.26.2012
12:38 pm
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Andy Warhol’s ‘Kiss’
01.20.2012
02:28 pm
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Andy Warhol’s Kiss is probably the artist’s earliest film work that was screened in public. Harkening back to the time when Hayes Office censors would not allow lips to touch and linger for more than three seconds in Hollywood films, with Kiss, Warhol decided to shoot male/female, female/female and male/male snogs that went on for three minutes. The concept was likely also influenced by a 1929 Greta Garbo film called The Kiss which apparently was screened at Amos Vogel’s influential Cinema 16 experimental film society right around the time that Warhol bought his first Bolex film camera.

The Kiss films were started in 1963 and shown in installments during weekly underground film screenings organized by Jonas Mekas. Eventually a 55-minute long version of Kiss was assembled. Among the participants were Ed Sanders of The Fugs, actor Rufus Collins from the Living Theatre, sculptor Marisol, artist Robert Indiana, as well as several of the outcasts and doomed beauties who would come to comprise the Factory’s “superstars.” The woman who you see kissing several guys, is Naomi Levine, who probably also came up with the concept (many of the kisses were also shot in her apartment). Andy Warhol referred to Levine as “my first female superstar.”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.20.2012
02:28 pm
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David Hockney talks about his Life and Art
01.11.2012
07:16 pm
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Looking like a delightfully naughty schoolboy, David Hockney explains, in this interview from Andy Warhol’s TV, why he never really wanted to be anything else but an artist, discussing his background, his early work, his heroes, his paintings, his art, his working methods, his interests, and in his involvement in designs for Ubu Roi, The Rake’s Progress and Parade. These clips usually disappear quite quickly, so watch it while you can. With subtitles in Spanish.
 

 
More from the fab Mr. H, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.11.2012
07:16 pm
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The Velvet Underground: Under Review (full film)
12.05.2011
11:36 am
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If you have ever seen any of those low-budget “Under Review” made for DVD rockumentaries, then you know that they follow a fairly tried and true formula: Almost no music by the group or performer the doc is about, approx 5 minutes of archival film clips in the course of 90 minutes and usually a bunch of crazed loner rock critics you’ve never heard of, yakking it up about their favorite rock groups. Often the interviewees are fairly tangential to the subjects, but not always. The range from awesome (the one on the early days of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention was excellent) to awful.

In The Velvet Underground: Under Review, they managed to nab TWO actual members of the Velvet Underground, Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule—both Reed and Cale, predictably sat this one out—which elevates this way above most of the others ones. Even longtime VU fans might learn something new here. For instance, I’ve listened to the VU for 36 years now and I didn’t know that Maureen Tucker didn’t play drums on Loaded because she was pregnant. Every copy of that album (and the CD) credits her on the back—your copy and mine—but it’s not her drumming, it’s Doug Yule, studio engineer Adrian Barber, a session drummer named Tommy Castanaro and Billy Yule, who was still a high school student (It doesn’t sound even remotely like Mo Tucker on Loaded as I found listening to it the day after I watched this doc). You also hear Mo talk about how she stripped down her drum kit to get a more primitive, less busy, sound. And Yule, who always gets short shrift in the VU saga, gets plenty of onscreen time to discuss his role in the band (How many of you reading this know it’s him singing “Candy Says” and not Lou Reed?). I’ve never seen an interview with him and I was very pleased to see his participation in this film. If you’re a VU fan, this film is absolutely worth your time.

Get it on DVD.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.05.2011
11:36 am
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Richard Hamilton: ‘Father of Pop Art’ has Died
09.13.2011
05:48 pm
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Richard Hamilton the first Pop Artist and arguably one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century has died at the age of eighty-nine.

Born in London in 1922, Hamilton was determined to become an artist an early age, he quit school at 15, and studied art at night before entering the Royal Academy at 16. His studies were cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War, during which he worked as a draughtsman with engineers and scientists at EMI. After the war returned to the Royal Academy, but was expelled for “not profiting from the instruction”. He then attended the Slade College of Art for 2 years, from which he started working at the ICA, where he produced posters, leaflets and exhibit work.

In 1951, Hamilton curated his first exhibition, Growth and Form. This was followed in 1955 with the seminal Man, Machine and Motion, which examined human interaction with machine and environment, and how “the need to cope with technology provokes great art.”

It was at this time Hamilton met with Eduardo Paolozzi, who was already working on the collages which are now best associated with Pop Art. Hamilton joined Paolozzi in the loose grouping of artists known as the Independent Group, who gathered around the ICA.

In 1956, the Independent Group mounted This Is Tomorrow, an exhibition that is now seen as one of the most influential of the past sixty years - its resonance is still with us today. This was the show that announced Pop Art to the world - long before Warhol, who was then window dressing. As described by the Daily Telegraph:

This Is Tomorrow, a quasi-anthropological, partly ironic exhibition embracing the imagery of the embryonic mass media. In Hamilton’s words, the idea was to examine “our new visual environment — cinema, the jukebox, Marilyn Monroe, and comics — all these games with sound, optical illusion and imagery”.

 
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His own small, dense, prophetic work Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? not only introduced the word “pop” into art (emblazoned on the muscleman’s phallic lollipop) but also anticipated many of the key images of the genre: the television; the Warner Bros billboard; the comic poster (Lichtenstein); the packaged ham (Rosenquist); the Motel bed (Oldenburg); and the Ford logo — Hamilton’s obsession with car design and engineering culminated in Hommage à Chrysler (1957). This was Pop Art, but not populist art. Hamilton called it “a new landscape of secondary, filtered material” – sophisticated art to be devoured by a mass audience.

The exhibition’s success gained him a teaching post at the Royal College of Art, where he influenced David Hockney and Peter Blake. He produced works such as Hers Is A Lush Situation (1958), in which automotive and female design are commingled; Pin-up (1961), with its mixed idioms, classical, modern, vulgar; and the sketchy, painterly collage-like rapture of $he (1962) – it was, he suggested, “a sieved reflection of the adman’s paraphrase of the consumer’s dream”.

In 1962, Hamilton’s wife, Terry, was tragically killed in a automobile accident. Hamilton quit Britain for the USA, where he became close friends with Marcel Duchamp. The friendship led to Hamilton curating a retrospective of Duchamp’s work at the Tate Gallery, London.
 
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The association with Pop Art, led Hamilton to be hailed the “Father of Pop Art” a title he loathed. The association continued in the mid-sixties after he returned to England, and produced two of his most famous works Swingeing London 67, a portrait of Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser under arrest, which became one of the defining images of the 1960s. The following year Hamilton designed the cover for the Beatles White Album, which became his best known work.

The sixties also saw Hamilton influence another, younger generation of artists and musicians, most famously one of his pupils, Bryan Ferry and his band Roxy Music.

In the the 1970s, Hamilton had retrospectives at the Tate (1970) and the Guggenheim in New York (1973), both exhibitions subsequently toured Europe.

I saw one retrospective of his work during this decade at the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, which mixed his famous line drawings for James Joyce’s Ulysses, with his Pop Art, and silk screens. It was highly impressive, but more because of the intelligence on display, rather than any shared emotion inspired by the work. This may explain why Hamilton never really made the cross-over from critical acclaim to populist success.

The seventies saw Hamilton produce some of his most political work:

Hamilton had always been politically engaged, vociferously supporting the CND. In the 1980s he began a “Northern Ireland” trilogy: The Citizen (1981-83) depicted a “dirty protest” prisoner in the Maze; The Subject (1988-89), a self-righteous Orangeman; and The State (1993), a British soldier on patrol. Inevitably such politicised subject matter attracted criticism, though many considered the works merely naive oversimplifications.

Despite his advancing years, Hamilton continued to reinvent himself. In the 1980s he began working with computers: “I initially ventured into working with computers because I didn’t want to get left behind. I was approaching old age and aware of it, and I thought ‘I’m going to keep up with this’ and found out that I was ahead of everybody.” He designed two computers, the OHIO and the Diab DS-101, and increasingly used digital devices to manipulate images and create a dialogue between technique, technology and aesthetics.

The attraction of computers, he claimed, was that “you have the possibility of perfection. I’m after beauty — of composition, colour and tone.” It did not seem ironic that a man in his eighth decade was exploring technology with greater vivacity than almost any other artist: throughout his long career, Hamilton’s work anticipated almost every interpretative cultural theory, from Marshall McLuhan to the “Young British Artists”, and provided the most thorough engagement with mass media and technology this side of the Atlantic. Damien Hirst referred to Hamilton as “the greatest”.

Hamilton was appointed Companion of Honour in 2000; in 2006 he received the Max Beckmann Prize for Painting. A major retrospective of his work is due to travel to tour America and Europe from 2013.

Richard Hamilton married Terry O’Reilly in 1947; they had a son and a daughter. Rita Donagh, whom he married in 1991, survives him with the son of his first marriage.

 

 
Bonus clip, Richard Hamilton on Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.13.2011
05:48 pm
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Landlord to Warhol: No more parties!
08.18.2011
01:20 pm
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In a 1965 letter, Andy Warhol’s landlord asks him to “keep it down.” This image came from Johan Kugelberg’s VU coffee table book, The Velvet Underground: New York Art (Rizzoli).

Via Letters of Note

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.18.2011
01:20 pm
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Life-like sculpture of Andy Warhol as an 83-year-old, unveiled
08.05.2011
03:11 pm
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To commemorate Andy Warhol’s 83rd birthday on August 6th, the McDermott Galleries in Birmingham, England, are exhibiting a sculpture of what the 83-year-old might have looked like had he lived.

The sculpture is by Edgar Askelovic, a 23-year-old artists based in Birmingham, who spent 3 months working on it, and while the result may be incredibly “life-like”, it looks less like Andy Warhol and more like one of the two aged hecklers, Waldorf and Statler, from The Muppet Show.

For some strange reason, Warhol is posed in short pants - undergarments? - in a squatting position, which unfortunately makes the great artist look like he’s taking a poop. According to Askelovic, the pose is taken from a photograph, as explained on the McDermott Galleries blog:

“The pose of the piece is taken from a photograph of Warhol in the 60s.  He is a huge inspiration to me and I wanted to make sure that I did him justice with my work.”
“I thought long and hard about what he might look like today, which led me to sculpt him without his teeth and with the wrinkles that reflect the years that have now passed.  Although maybe there should also be a botox version – after all, he was a pioneer of all things new”

“I remember reading about Andy’s humble beginnings – his first film, titled Sleep, was an epic 6 hours long and all about one of his friends sleeping.  9 people attended the premiere apparently and only 7 stayed until the end – he was a true creative.” I also love this quote from Andy, it sort of sums up how I try to approach my own work:

“An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.” 

—Andy Warhol on Art and Artists

Gallery owner Terence McDermott said: “The idea is that on Saturday if he was still alive he would have been 83-years-old so what Edgar has done is to use some artistic license to create his own interpretation of Warhol as an 83 year old. This wig is just as he would have worn it – a simple substitute for a cap.”

“It’s tragic to think about the life, art and advances Warhol missed out on.  I wonder what he would have done with the internet, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube…reality TV?!  Maybe there would even be a Warhol App?

“The thought of Andy Warhol in the digital age is mind blowing.  The world was always one step behind him and it’s such a shame he is not here with us.”

The sculpture is called Andy Walking, Andy tired, Andy take a little snooze, after a line from the David Bowie “Andy Warhol”, and is on sale for $16,355 (£9,995).
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.05.2011
03:11 pm
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An unusual homage to Andy Warhol
07.13.2011
04:42 pm
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Click on the image to view the entire piece.

(via Nistagmus)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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07.13.2011
04:42 pm
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First Look: Art Basel 2011
06.14.2011
03:39 pm
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‘Hanging Piece’ - Kendell Geers
 
An estimated 60,000 people will attend this year’s Art Basel fair, which opens Wednesday until June 19. Art Basel is considered the world’s top fair for modern and contemporary art, with 300 galleries displaying more than 2,500 artists, with an estimated combined value of nearly $2 billion.

Art Basel is important as it gives a better idea of the international art market than other fairs, which tend to be dominated by galleries from the host country. This year Art Basel has 73 galleries form the USA, 50 from Germany, 32 from Switzerland, 31 from England, and 23 from France. The still-emerging markets of India, Brazil, China and Russia are less well represented, with a combined total of 12 galleries, while Hungary, Thailand, and Lebanon represented for the first time.

Here’s a selection of some of this year’s exhibits, more of which can be seen here.
 
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‘Fall’ - Jonathan Monk
 
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‘Untitled’ - Keith Haring
 
Via the Daily Telegraph
 
More exhibits from Art Basel, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.14.2011
03:39 pm
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Jonas Mekas: Beautiful home-movies of Andy Warhol and George Maciunas, 1971
06.12.2011
05:43 pm
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DM pal, Alessandro Cima wrote a post on this short film, about Andy Warhol and George Maciunas by Jonas Mekas, on his excellent Candelight Stories site.

The film consists of three home movies: Warhol at the Whitney, May 1, 1971, George’s Dumpling Party, June 29 1971 and Warhol revisited, May 1971 which show scenes from the opening of a Warhol retrospective, followed by footage of Warhol, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and founder of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas at what looks like a fondue party in 80 Wooster St., Soho, before returning back to the Whitney.

The narration is by Mekas, who talks about the relationship between Warhol and Maciunas, Pop Art and Fluxus, which he says are the same, as both dealt with nothingness - “both took life as a game and laughed at it.” Warhol standing on the side, never a part of it, with George “laughing, laughing all the time.”

These beautiful short films are like water-colored moments from pop history, which as Cima points out:

Home movies become an artform in Mekas’ hands.

 

 
With thanks to Alessandro Cima 
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.12.2011
05:43 pm
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Eating Raoul: An Evening With Mary Woronov
06.08.2011
07:28 pm
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Actress/artist Mary Woronov has had a singular career that begins dancing with the Velvet Underground and appearing in Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls. Along the way she was in Rock-n- Roll High School, Death Race 2000 and Eating Raoul. She’ll be will be making a special appearance this Thursday night, June 9th, at 7:30p.m. at Cinefamily in Los Angeles:

Not every actor can list both Warhol films and “Murder, She Wrote” in their CV—oh, wait, no actor can claim that but Mary Woronov. There is a cult of M.V., and it’s richly deserved; her performances are so distinct and unique that her mere onscreen presence sharpens each image, and gives every scene a B12 shot in the rear. To admire Mary’s work is to get deeply involved, like you would with a new favorite band: once you’re introduced, you’re hooked, and have to track down every last appearance. She is smart, she is hilarious, she is sexy, and she can convey everything from knife-edge danger to warm familiarity with a single look. Beyond her voluminous career in film and TV, she’s also a painter, a novelist, a a dancer, a college professor—in short, a superstar. Join us in a spirited on-stage discussion with Mary, as we weave a web taking us from her days as a member of Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, to her stint on a network soap, her award-winning stage work, the Corman years, her kinship with Paul Bartel and beyond!

At 9p.m. there will be a 35mm screening of the classic black comedy Eating Raoul:

“You really get to like Paul and Mary, and want them to succeed, even if they do have to kill some perverts along the way.”—J. Read, Monsters At Play

An outlandish mixture of ‘50s-themed high camp, ‘70s Robert Downey, Sr.-style bizarro satire and ‘80s gross-out sex romp, the indie hit Eating Raoul is Cult Film Director Hall Of Famer Paul Bartel’s finest hour. Bartel and Mary Woronov star as a sexually conservative couple (“Paul” and “Mary”, natch) who, after they need quick cash to open their dream restaurant, devise an makeshift S&M operation to lure rich horndogs to their deaths. Beyond its savagely funny swipes at the Sexual Revolution (featuring squads of lecherous swingers, all whacked out like Mr. Farley from “Three’s Company” on PCP), the film is as much a love letter to our city as a prime Cheech & Chong vehicle, for it’s crammed full of nutty local characters and enough unmistakably L.A. locales to fill an entire season of Huell Howser specials. Woronov easily steamrolls over the film’s population of wackos and sleazoids with aplomb; with her distinct mixture of understated deadpan comedy, soft sensuality and no-bullshit ingenuity, Mary’s radiant heat has ensured that Eating Raoul remains a “classic cult classic.” (Rob Lineberger, DVD Verdict).

Get tickets here.
 

 
Below, the (great) trailer for the outlandish cult classic Eating Raoul:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.08.2011
07:28 pm
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Awesome People Hanging Out Together
05.28.2011
07:42 pm
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The site Awesome People Hanging Out Together has rather fine photographs of celebrities from times gone-by just hanging out together.

Here you’ll find William Burroughs having dinner with Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger; Grace Slick and Janis Joplin playing-up for the camera; and the usual suspects backstage at concerts. There are also a couple of fun video clips, including a chat-show meeting between Alfred Hitchcock and James Brown. It’s a bit like Us or Hello! Magazine with a degree in Pop Culture, and you can see more here.
 

 
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Grace Slick, Janis Joplin
 
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Jack Nicholson, Lauren Bacall, Warren Beatty
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.28.2011
07:42 pm
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