DECEMBER 2008
(to current news | November 2008)

New London Art Gallery to open
with Ray Johnson exhibition

Drawing of original shopfront at 56 Artillery Lane

Raven Row, a major new art gallery located at 56 Artillery Lane in London's East End, will open in February 2009 with an exhibition of work by Ray Johnson. (See Ray Johnson: Raven Row: 28 February - 10 May 2009.)

Johnson was a friend of Warhol (assisting him on the film Jill Johnston Dancing) and knew many of the Factory regulars. Among the Warhol stars whose images Ray Johnson incorporated in his own work were Andrea Feldman, Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling. Hailed as "New York's most famous unknown artist" by New York Times critic Grace Glueck in 1965, Johnson committed suicide in January 1995.

The exhibition of Johnson's work at Raven Row includes pieces from the Richard L. Feigen Gallery in New York and the William S. Wilson Collection.

The website of Raven Row is at: http://www.ravenrow.org.

50th Anniversary production of The Connection
to open at The Living Theatre on New Years Eve

The Living Theatre in New York will be presenting a 50th anniversary production of one of their most controversial plays, The Connection, beginning on December 31, 2008. The new production of the play, first performed in 1959, will be directed by Judith Malina who co-founded The Living Theatre with Julian Beck. During the 1950s and early 1960s, The Living Theatre was known for its cutting-edge theatrical productions where the boundaries between art [theatre] and life were blurred as actors were encouraged to improvise around loose scenarios - just as Warhol would later encourage improvisation in his films around nebulous storylines with the characters taking precedence over the events portrayed.

From Playing Underground by Stephen J. Bottoms:

"Despite being dismissed as a 'farrago of dirt' by the New York Times for its frank exploration of the lives of a group of New York heroin addicts... the play [The Connection] became something of a cause célèbre... Gelber's play effectively adapted the influence of Waiting for Godot to the realities of New York low-life: a racially mixed group of junkies... hang around in Leach's run-down apartment, passing time with idle talk and activities while waiting for their 'connection' to arrive. Unlike Godot, the connection - a dealer named Cowboy - does in fact show up, and administers heroin to all and sundry in the offstage toilet... The intrigue of The Connection lies not in its language but in its conceptual structure... the junkies' behaviour is metatheatrically framed, from the start, by the use of two other characters identified as the playwright and the producer, who speak to the audience from the stage, explaining that they have assembled a cast of authentic heroin addicts, rather than mere actors, and that they will not simply be speaking pre-scripted lines, but improvising in the manner of jazz musicians around a loose scenario... Such provocations may well have prompted spectators to wonder whether something illegal was in fact going on under the guise of fictional drama. Indeed, production anecdotes suggest that some members of Freddie Redd's quartet - the jazz ensemble who played onstage during the performance - were indeed drug users, and that, on occasion, one or other of them would pass out, for real, during the performance." (SB28-9)

Although not in The Connection, Warhol stars who were involved with The Living Theatre included Billy Name, Taylor Mead, James Waring (Haircut #1) and Freddy Herko. Rufus Collins, one of the few black people to appear in Warhol's films, was also a member of The Living Theatre during the 1960s. The Warhol films that Collins appeared in included two Screen Tests, Kiss, Batman Dracula, Soap Opera and Couch.

Callie Angell:

"The actor Rufus Collins, whose friendship with Warhol began in the 1950s, trained at the Actors Studio in New York and was a member of the Living Theatre in the 1960s... Collins was also one of the earliest stars of Warhol's cinema, beginning in August 1963 with Naomi and Rufus Kiss, the film from which Warhol's Plexiglas sculpture The Large Kiss was derived... Later in his career, Collins played a Transylvanian in the cult feature The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and had a few small roles in more mainstream pictures such as Shock Treatment (1981) and The Hunger (1983). He settled in Europe, dying from AIDS in Holland in 1996." (AD54)

The website for The Living Theatre is at: http://www.livingtheatre.org.

[Note: The title of Warhol's sculpture The Large Kiss (referred to above in the quote from Callie Angell) was presumably alluding to Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass - another example of the connection between Warhol and Duchamp. In addition to films that Andy Warhol made with Duchamp as a subject, Warhol's Most Wanted Men series (1964) has also been linked to Marcel Duchamp's Wanted: $2,000 by Reva Wolf in Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s (p. 23). And just as Duchamp "retired" from painting in the 1920s, Warhol announced his retirement from painting during a trip to Paris in 1965. Billy Name recalls "Andy Warhol did announce his 'retirement' from painting as a response to Duchamp's action and he did it when he was in Paris - Duchampland. It may well be that Andy attributed his works to Brigid [Berlin], and also Ultra [Violet] at one point, in response to the Rose Selavy (eros, c'est la vie) routine. The Duchamp-like announcement was once known as such to insiders in the art world at one point (like Henry Geldzahler). (August 28, 2008)]

Gerhard Richter's JFK trilogy at the National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery in London will be exhibiting Gerhard Richter's series of JFK portraits together for the first time as part of their "Gerhard Richter Portraits" show which opens on February 26, 2009. Richter has been referred to as the "German Andy Warhol." A selection of his paintings can be viewed as a slide show on the Sky News website at:
http://indepth.news.sky.com/InDepth/topic/Gerhard_Richter_And_Andy_Warhol.

Details on the exhibition at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3708332/Gerhard-Richters-JFK-trilogy-to-be-shown-together-for-first-time.html.

A Times (London) article on Richter by Waldemar Januszczak can be found at:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article1038988.ece.

Andy Warhol and Art Basel

The Art Newspaper is offering a free download of its Art Basel editions on their website here. Highlights include the identification of the buyer of last year's record setting Green Car Crash as Phillipe Niarchos; comments made by Jennifer Roth of Sotheby's in regard to "Warhol tapestries" ("It used to be when they hit the auction world, a Warhol would sell for $4,000 but now because of the popularity of the genre [Warhol tapestries] have gone up to $30,000"); and an article on artist-endowed Foundations which notes that the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts "presides over the largest asset base in the field ($340m in mid-2007)."

Meanwhile, MonstersAndCritics.com is reporting that both Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson attended the fair. Pamela apparently arrived wearing "just a T-shirt and underwear" and carrying a Campbell's Soup clutch bag.

Andy Warhol: Headlines at LACMA

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is currently planning an exhibition titled "Andy Warhol: Headlines" to be held February 25 - May 16, 2010. The museum's blurb for the show notes: "Andy Warhol’s Boy for Meg (1962) launched a series of major works, spanning until 1968 that drew from the headlines. The complete group of headline works totals approximately thirty-five pieces and ranges from prints and drawings to paintings and sculpture. The pairing of the original headlines with their transformations into works of art will reveal the artist’s own editorial process—his choices about what to include, what to change, and what to enlarge—showcasing his own talents as a graphic designer."

The museum's website is at: http://www.lacma.org.

New publication date for Gary Indiana's Warhol book

Gary Indiana's book Andy Warhol and The Can that Sold the World, originally scheduled to be published in June 2008 is now due to be published in September 2009 by Basic Books. Details on the Amazon page here.

Other Warhol related books previously published by the same publishing group (Persus Books Group), include the Da Capo Press publications of Warhol: The Biography by Victor Bockris and I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews by Kenneth Goldsmith.

Factory People to be released on DVD in May 2009

The documentary, Factory People (see below), is due to be released on DVD in May 2009. Details on the Amazon page here.

Chelsea Hotel eviction controversy is picked up by The Observer

The Observer newspaper in London has published an article about the current controversy regarding the eviction of long-term tenants at the Chelsea Hotel.

From: "Chelsea's bohemians rage in fight to save New York landmark's soul" by David Smith (The Observer, November 30, 2008):

"Punks, poets, painters, dropouts, drug fiends, drag queens - all have been welcome at the Chelsea hotel. Andy Warhol filmed there, Arthur Miller wrote there and Leonard Cohen met Janis Joplin there, going on to write a song about New York's most beloved hotel.

But long-term tenants of the Chelsea - witnesses to a colourful history of fires, murders and suicides - believe it is in danger of losing its bohemian soul. They have launched numerous lawsuits against the hotel's owners because they fear eviction. And the new manager they blame for enforcing the crackdown is British."

The full article can be read at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/30/new-york-chelsea-hotel.

Factory People on Ovation TV

Taylor Mead, Jonas Mekas and Billy Name being interviewed for Factory People

Factory People, the three-part documentary first mentioned here in May 2005, is currently being shown on Ovation TV in the U.S. as part of a program series that also includes the films Basquiat and I Shot Andy Warhol - as well as the excellent documentary on Ray Johnson - How to Draw a Bunny. On Thanksgiving day, all three episodes of Factory People will be shown continuously.

Details on the Ovation TV website at: http://www.ovationtv.com.

A review of Factory People from the Los Angeles Times can be found at:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-andywarhol24-2008nov24,0,1028080.story.

New Andy Warhol books for 2009

New Andy Warhol books to be published in 2009 include Andy Warhol Treasures by Geralyn Huxley and Matt Wrbican (July 2009); Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol by Gunnar B. Kvaran, Hanne Beate Ueland, and Grete Arbu (March 2009); and the paperback version of Andy Warhol Portraits by Tony Shafrazi, Carter Ratcliff, and Robert Rosenblum (March 2009). Also coming out is the Andy Warhol Inspiration Box (July 2009) which presumably will be like the Andy Warhol Pop Box although what will be included in the inspiration box remains a mystery.

Andy Warhol Screen Tests to be released on DVD

Plexifilm, in conjunction with The Warhol museum, is releasing a DVD of 13 of Andy Warhol's Screen Tests on February 17, 2009 - the first ever authorized DVD of Andy Warhol's films.

Included will be the Screen Tests of Mary Woronov, Paul America, Susan Bottomly, Ann Buchanan, Freddy Herko, Jane Holzer (Toothbrush), Dennis Hopper, Billy Name, Nico, Richard Rheem, Lou Reed (Coke), Edie Sedgwick, and Ingrid Superstar.

Titled 13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, the DVD also features a specially commissioned soundtrack by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips and will be released in two versions - a retail version priced at $34.99 and a limited edition version for $250.00.

Pre-orders are currently being accepted by Plexifilm with a $5.00 discount on the retail version. Details at: http://www.plexifilm.com/title.php?id=36.

Superstars in Columbus

Photos of Holly Woodlawn, John Giorno, Taylor Mead and Penny Arcade during their November gig in Columbus Ohio:

Holly Woodlawn and Penny Arcade
(Photo: Robert Coddington)

John Giorno and Penny Arcade
(Photo: Robert Coddington)

Holly Woodlawn's manager Robert Coddington and Taylor Mead

(to current news | November 2008)