News Archive 2015
April 2015 to July 2015
for current news click on "home"
Brits deny visa to Ai Weiwei - Royal Academy issues statement
July 31, 2015: The British government has denied a six month visa to Chinese artists, Ai Weiwei. The refusal was based on their allegation that he had "received a criminal conviction in China" and did not declare it on his visa application. Yet the artist has never been convicted of a crime in China - he was detained but never convicted.
The decision to deny the six month visa may have more to do with the Brits' wanting to keep favour with their Chinese trading partners than with the artist's non-existent "criminal conviction." Instead of giving Ai Weiwei a six month visa they have only granted him a twenty day stay. As the BBC has pointed out, "Ai's 20-day visa means he will not be in the UK when China's President Xi Jinping makes a high-profile state visit in October - potentially avoiding any diplomatic embarrassment at a time when Britain is trying to improve relations with China."
If the real reason for denying him the visa was because of an undisclosed criminal conviction, the visa would most likely have been completely refused and not just limited to twenty days.
The Chinese government had seized Ai Weiwei's passport four years ago and refused to allow him to leave the country but his passport was recently returned to him and he is currently in Berlin visiting his family. During the time that his passport was seized he left a fresh bouquet of flowers outside his Beijing studio evey day. His passport was returned on the 600th day. Despite having been detained by China, he continues to be a staunch supporter of freedom in the arts. It's disheartening that, having been granted the right to travel by the Chinese government, his right is now being limited by the U.K.
Ai Weiwei was hoping to help prepare the major exhibition of his work that is due to run at the Royal Academy from September 19 to December 13, 2015, but twenty days will considerably limit his involvement with the show as well as the British art scene in general. (There is also going to be a Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei travelling exhibition in the U.S. next year - see below.)
The Royal Academy's Artistic Director, Tim Marlow, has issued the following statement: “We’re concerned that Ai Weiwei has not been granted a six month UK visa by the British government. We hope for a speedy resolution to this situation and we continue to look forward to welcoming Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy for his first major institutional exhibition in the UK this September.”
Emma Levigne on RainForest
30 July 2015: Emma Lavigne, one of the authors of Warhol Live, will be hosting a discussion on Merce Cunningham's dance piece, RainForest, on November 22, 2015 in conjunction with the "Warhol Underground" exhibition at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. The exhibition includes performances of RainForest featuring Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds.
Details of the talk here.
Mark Lancaster, who appeared in a Kiss film with Gerard Malanga and a few other Warhol films, talks about his experience as the set designer for a different piece by Merce Cunningham, Sounddance, here.
"Late Drawings of Andy Warhol: 1973-1987" concert and talk
29 July 2015: The Hyde Collection and the Summerland Music Society will be presenting a concert in conjunction with the exhibition, "The Late Drawings of Andy Warhol: 1973-1987," tomorrow (Thursday) at 7 pm in the community room in the basement of Crandall Public Library. The concert will feature music by composers who lived and worked in New York during the same time as Warhol. Erin Coe, director of The Hyde Collection, will also give a talk about the exhibition. The exhibition has been organized by The Warhol museum.
Details of the exhibition here.
Masters and Luminaries in Camden
28 July 2015: "Masters and Luminaries" opens at Proud Camden (in London) on July 23, 2015 and runs until September 13, 2015. The exhibition includes photographs by David McCabe of the time he spent with Warhol and members of the original silver Factory during 1964-65 as well as Justin De Villeneuve's photographs of Twiggy which launched her career (at the age of 15). Other work includes Brian Aris' early shots of Debbie Harry, Brian Duffy's photos of David Bowie during his Alladin Sane days and John Byrne Cooke's shots of Bob Dylan.
Details here.
A number of limited edition photographs are being sold in conjunction with the exhibition including some great ones from McCabe:
One of the limited edition photographs being sold by Proud here.
Danny Says is sold out
27 July 2015: The screening of the new documentary about Danny Fields, Danny Says, at Lincoln Center on Wednesday is sold out. Standby tickets will be available on the day of the screening. The screening will include a Q & A with director Brendon Toller. The film was financed with the help of a Kickstarter crowd funding campaign.
Fields worked as the managing editor of Datebook magazine during the sixties, was a friend of Edie Sedgwick and allegedly managed the Velvet Underground for about "two weeks." He later wrote the album notes for their "Live at Max's Kansas City" album, recorded by Brigid Berlin. He also worked as Steve Paul's "chauffeur" for a time and he has been linked to the MC5 and Iggy Pop and The Stooges and co-managed the Ramones beginning in 1975. Basically, he spent his life hanging out with famous rock stars and lived a life of drugs, sex and rock and roll. But unlike most of the other people doing the same at that time, he was openly gay.
R.I.P. Ingrid Sischy
26 July 2015: Most of you will know by now that Ingrid Sischy died on Friday. The cause of death was breast cancer. She was 63 and died in hospital at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Ingrid served as the the editor-in-chief of Interview magazine from 1989-2008 and was the god-parent of Elton John's child, Zachary - an honour she shared with her girlfriend Sandra Brant who was previously married to Interview owner, Peter Brant.
Peter Brant had became an owner of Interview magazine in the early seventies after purchasing shares belonging to Jerome Hill and his boyfriend, Charles Rydell. In 1975 Brant gave up those shares in exchange for financing Andy Warhol's Bad, but in the summer of 1989 he and his wife Sandra re-purchased Interview for $12 million. (BC503) Brant divorced Sandra in 1995 after fathering a child with supermodel Stephanie Seymour. Sandra had already started having a relationship with Sischy at the time. According to the Daily Mail, Ingrid finally married Sandra in Ingrid's "final weeks" after being lovers for more than 25 years.
Sischy was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair at the time of her death. She had started writing articles for the magazine in 1997 and her last article will appear in their September issue. Her writing will also appear in Catherine Opie's profile of Elizabeth Taylor - 700 Nimes Road - which is due to be published on October 6, 2015.
Sischy is survived by Sandra Brant, her mother Claire and her brother David.
The Trip, Andy Warhol's Plastic Fantastic Cross-Country Adventure
26 July 2015: Deborah Davis' book, The Trip, Andy Warhol's Plastic Fantastic Cross-Country Adventure, is out next week. The book is an account of Warhol's road trip from New York to California for his second exhibition at the Ferus Gallery. Occupants of the car included Taylor Mead, Wynn Chamberlain and Gerard Malanga. Davis previously wrote Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black and White Ball.
A short interview with Davis can be found here.
Richard Rheem
25: July 2015: Does anyone know what happened to Richard Rheem? If you were a friend or relative of Rheem, or if you have any information about him, please contact me at garycom.now@gmail.com.
See: "May 27, 1966: Andy Warhol Meets Richard Rheem."
Holly Woodlawn
24 July 2015: Holly Woodlawn sends the following from her hospital bed at Cedars-Sinai:
"First off, for the record, I have quit show business.OK, now for the show. Thank you to everyone that has been good enough to help me out. I can't wait to get out!! Keep the well wishes comin' - they really help. See you in Valhalla (haha).
Love you madly,
La Woodlawn"
Warhol by the Book
22 July 2015: "Warhol by the Book," curated by Matt Wrbican, opens at The Warhol museum on October 10, 2015 and runs until January 10, 2016. Details here.
Holly Woodlawn Battles Cancer
21 July 2015: I have added an update on Holly Woodlawn's battle with cancer here.
Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei
20 July 2015: Details of the Andy Warhol/Ai Weiwei exhibition have emerged on The Nation website which notes that "Among the parallels the exhibition will draw is the two artists' affinity for cats, the focus of a large-scale installation for kids and families. Warhol lived with a 'herd' of Siamese cats in the 1950s (all but one of which were named Sam) and he depicted them frequently in his work. Ai's studio houses more than 30 cats he regularly mentions on social media and in blog posts. Ai is developing a children's project for the show that will reflect that interest, along with an interactive feature allowing young visitors to take a Warhol-inspired image and share it via the social media. " Apparently the first book that Ai purchased while living in New York in the 1980s was The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again).
"Andy Warhol/Ai Weiwei" will run at the National Gallery in Victoria from December 11, 2015 to 24 April 2016 before its run at The Warhol museum from June to August 2016.
Sponsors and media partners for the National Gallery show include Mercedes Benz, EY, Quantas, La Trobe University, Vogue magazine, Sofitel luxury hotels, Valmorgan, Melbourne Airport, Smooth FM, and Dulux with major donors being the Loti and Victor Smorgon Fund.
Holly Woodlawn has cancer
19 July 2015: Sad news to report: Holly Woodlawn has cancer. The biopsy results from the tests done on July 15th (see below) have shown that she has lung cancer that has spread to her brain. My deep-felt sympathy to Holly who is at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. More on this later.
More about Holly here.
Andy Warhol's Soap Opera
18 July 2015: Reminder: Tonight, Andy Warhol's Soap Opera, is going to be screened at the Whitney in conjunction with the Jewish Museum's current exhibition, "Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television." Claire K. Henry of The Andy Warhol Film Project will be moderating a discussion afterwards with the artist Alex Bag and Bruce Jenkins from the Art Institute of Chicago. Details here.
18 July 2015: "Basquiat: Now's the Time" opens at the Guggenheim Bilbao on July 3, 2015 and runs until November 1, 2015. The Jeff Koons retrospective at the same museum opened on June 9th and closes September 27, 2015.
Basquiat details here.
Koons here.
My Hustler in Tampa
17 July 2015: The Tampa Museum of Art is presenting a festival of Andy Warhol's films beginning 16 July with a screening of My Hustler and Kiss at the Dickey Family Lecture Hall. Other screenings will include Mrs. Warhol, Poor Little Rich Girl, Vinyl and Couch. Details here.
More on My Hustler here.
More on the Kiss films here.
Andy Warhol kitchen in the Jewish Journal
16 July 2015: Jonathan Fong's Andy Warhol kitchen was profiled in yesterday's Jewish Journal. Great kitchen Jonathan! Details, photos and instructions here.
More on Andy Warhol's Kitchen (the film) here.
Wexner Center for the Arts
15 July 2015: The Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio continues to present excellent exhibitions and screenings. "After Picasso: 80 Contemporary Artists" runs September 19 to December 27, 2015 and includes over 150 works by Andy Warhol, Martin Kippenberger, Marlene Dumas, Richard Hamilton, Jasper Johns, Louise Lawler, Roy Lichtenstein, Art & Language and others.
The blurb for the show notes, "The exhibition, originally titled 'Picasso in Contemporary Art,' was organized by the Deichtorhallen, a highly respected contemporary art institution in Hamburg, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary and was curated by its general director, Dirk Luckow. Select American artists have been added to the Wexner Center presentation of the German-born exhibition."
The Wexner's summer film screenings include Grey Gardens by the Maysles brothers on July 31- August 1, 2015 and, at the "Wex Drive-In," a screening of John Waters' Cry-Baby on August 13 which features Joe Dallesandro in the cast.
Third Art International in Istanbul
14 July 2015: Art International, now in its third year, will take place at the Halic Congress Center in Istanbul on September 5-6, 2015 with a private preview for buyers on the 4th. The modern art fair includes 83 galleries from 24 countries. A list of the participating galleries can be found here. Artists include Andy Warhol, Grayson Perry and Banksy.
Shepard Fairey arrested
13 July 2015: Artist Shepard Fairey was arrested last week in Los Angeles for a painting he did on the wall of a vacant building in Detroit. Fairey's work is exhibited in major museums in the U.S. and Europe and the "illegal" mural is probably worth more than $100,000. (Detroit should be thanking him rather than arresting him.) The Warhol museum hosted a retrospective of his work from October 18, 2009 to January 31, 2010.
ANDY: A Popera
12 July 2015: Tickets go on sale on 3 August for the production of ANDY: A Popera, presented by Opera Philadelphia and The Bearded Ladies. Details here.
Holly Woodlawn
11 July 2015: Holly Woodlawn - one of the subjects of Lou Reed's song Walk on the Wild Side and star of Trash and Women in Revolt - has recently been hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. She suffers from multiple medical conditions but her health has improved considerably since her hospitalization. She is having a lung biopsy on 15 July 2015 using a minimally invasive procedure. We send her the absolute best wishes for her continuing recovery.
Andy Warhol: Polaroids
10 July 2015: Architectural Digest is running an article on a new book to be published in October - Andy Warhol: Polaroids. The AD blog includes a slide show of a selection of Warhol's Polaroids here.
9 July 2015: Dark Horse Comics - publisher of licensed comics based on movies such as Star Wars and Aliens - has released a new comic, The Tomorrows #1, which includes a supercomputer named "Warhol." As with the comic's title, numbers were also used with Warhol's film titles, such as Haircut #1, Beauty #2 and others.
The blurb for the comic reads: "They told you the counterculture was dead. They were wrong. Welcome to the new reality. A bold new speculative-fiction comic from the mind of writer Curt Pires, with each issue illustrated by a different brilliant artist! The future: Art is illegal. Everything everyone ever posted online has been weaponized against them. The reign of the Corporation is quickly becoming as absolute as it is brutal—unless The Tomorrows can stop it."
Excerpt from The Tomorrows #1 - a comic featuring a supercomputer named "Warhol"
Comics reviewer Maximus Prime, writes on the Geeks of Doom website, "When I started reading The Tomorrows #1, I couldn’t help but think of Andy Warhol and his pop art movement. As I read on, a smile emblazoned itself on my face when I realized that the Tomorrow’s supercomputer is named Warhol, is made in the likeness of Andy Warhol, and even speaks like Andy Warhol. The vivid colors and traditional comic book style drawings blend together with the dark, futuristic world to burst off of the page in a genuinely superb way."
International Pop exhibition catalogue
8 July 2015: The "International Pop" exhibition catalogue ($85.00) is due to be published in the next few weeks. The exhibition currently at the Walker Art Center includes work by a fascinating international array of artists and an extensive series of film screenings.
The Street, The Store, and the Silver Screen
7 July 2015: "The Street, The Store, and the Silver Screen: Pop Art from the MCA Collection" opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago on 19 December 2015 and runs until 27 March 2016. Artists include Andy Warhol, Ed Rusha, Claes Oldenburg and Mel Ramos.
Little Red Book #178
6 July 2015: A gallery talk by Kelsey Donahue will take place on 12 September 2015 at the Frye Art Museum on "Andy Warhol: Little Red Book #178 + 12 Screen Tests." The talk is in conjunction with their exhibition "Andy Warhol: Little Red Book #178" which opened on 16 May and runs until 13 September 2015.
From the museum blurb:
"Little Red Book #178 comprises nineteen Polaroids of friends and celebrities, many of whom were involved in the production of Warhol's film L'Amour (1973), which was filmed in Paris in September 1970. L'Amour was written and directed by Warhol and Paul Morrissey. The film starred Warhol superstars Jane Forth and Donna Jordan, French actor Max Delys, and American actor Michael Sklar; the cast also included Peter Greenlaw and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld."
Andy Warhol's L'Amour
5 July 2015: I have added a new essay on Andy Warhol's L'Amour here.
Glenn O'Brien, Jane Holzer, John Cale and John Giorno
4 July 2015: A selection of photographs of Glenn O'Brien interviewing Jane Holzer, John Cale and John Giorno during "Warholmania" in Munich (see below) can be found here. (scroll down).
Sotheby's Sells Dollars
3 July 2015: Sotheby's has posted a video on their website hyping the results of their July Contemporary Art sale (see below) which included the sale of numerous Warhol dollar paintings. A woman at the beginning of the video proclaims that the sale produced the "highest total ever" for a Contemporary Art sale in London. That's as far as I got - the video was hurting my ears (and eyes). I would much rather have seen more footage from the auction itself - without the blaring sound track and annoying quick-fire editing. Do they honestly believe that buyers or sellers are actually influenced by this sort of thing? It's more of a 'turn off' than a 'turn on.'
The art press has been less kind to Sotheby's, noting that quite a few high profile items did not sell. Blouin ArtInfo notes that "the result failed to meet pre-sale expectations of £142.2-202.6 million on 58 lots offered. Nine of those 58 went unsold for what might have been a reasonable 15.5 percent buy-in rate by lot—except that three of those casualties carried a combined pre-sale low estimate of £43 million pounds."
Warhol's hand painted One Dollar bill (Silver Certificate) (1962) went to a telephone bidder for £20,869,000 (est. £13-18 million). Warhol's dollars signs from the 1980s (once considered cheap cousins to his 'real' dollar paintings from the '60s) continue to rise in value - at least among dealers. José Mugrabi bought one for £4,685,000 (est. £4-6 million) and Larry Gagosian for £6,925,000 (est. £4.5-6.5 million).
Two major paintings from the Warhol dollars of 1962 went unsold: Front and Back Dollar Bills and Two Dollar Bills (Back) (40 Two Dollar Bills in Green).
Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei
2 July 2015: An exhibition of works by Ai Weiwei coupled with the works of Andy Warhol will open at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne prior to a run at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. The double artist show, "Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei," will run at the NGV from 11 December 2015 to 24 April 2016 before opening at The Warhol in June 2016. The Warhol Foundation has supported Ai Weiwei for a considerable period of time. When he was detained by Chinese authorities in 2011, they issued a press release calling for his release.
"Richard Prince Sold Strangers' Instagram Photos
for $90k And It's Probably Legal"
1 July 2015: The Huffington Post has published an article on the appropriation of images by artists - "Richard Prince Sold Strangers' Instagram Photos For $90k -- And It's Probably Legal" - which includes an analysis of Warhol as the "father" of appropriation.
Warhol's Nature
30 June 2015: "Warhol's Nature" opens at the Crystal Bridges Museum of Modern Art on the Fourth of July and includes a Spotify playlist of music that Warhol was known to listen to. The exhibition runs until 5 October 2015. Details here.
Andy Warhol and Schraffts
29 June 2015: A still from the commercial that Andy Warhol did for Schraffts in 1968 has appeared on ArtNet here.
Warhol makes reference to the commercial in an interview from the 10 November 1968 issue of The New York Times magazine here.
Robert Heide and Candy Darling
28 June 2015: Caffe Cino playwright Robert Heide has written an interesting account of the Village gay scene in the sixties, including a mention of Candy Darling. Heide wrote the play Bed on which Warhol based his film, Bed, as advertised in the 28 April 1966 issue of the Village Voice:
Village Voice ad 28 April 1966 advertising Warhol's
film, Bed, "based on a play by Bob Heide"
Robert Heide ("Riots at the Stonewall and magic at Caffe Cino; Gay revolution in Greenwich Village in the ’60s," The Villager, 25 June 2015):
I myself hit the Stonewall a few times back in the early days with a brownette, pointy-toothed Candy Darling. This was before he/she was given a makeover by the flamboyant Off Off Broadway theater director Ron Link, who taught Candy how to do her makeup in 1930s movie-star style.
The newly glamorized Candy was presented in a show written by Jackie Curtis at Bastiano’s Cellar Studio Theater in the Village called “Glamour, Glory and Gold,” which featured in his first stage role a young actor named Robert De Niro. For the Candy transformation, Link got out a white henna powder concoction that, when mixed with peroxide and pure ammonia and applied to dark hair, turned it platinum-white blonde, thus changing a drab Candy into a Kim Novak/Jean Harlow blonde bombshell.
Eventually, Candy went on to become a Warhol Superstar: for the final makeover touch Warhol paid to have Candy’s teeth capped pearly white. At about the same time, drag performers Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn also jumped into the Warhol superstar film scene at the Factory.
The full article can be found here.
Anthony Haden-Guest
27 June 2015: Anthony Haden-Guest has curated an exhibition devoted to mid-70s to 90s NY club culture (including Studio 54 of course) at the WhiteBox Gallery. According to the gallery, "this exhibition will run throughout the summer at WhiteBox. Offsite musical performances and capsule exhibitions will be hosted at ACME and VS Gallery (dates to be announced)." The show closes on August 23rd - no dates yet for any off-site events.
Details here.
The Chelsea Hotel
25 June 2015: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the redevelopment of the Chelsea Hotel "is running at least a year behind schedule, is over budget and has been the source of disagreements between its owners over how to position the hotel and how much to spend on upgrades." Joseph Chetrit bought the property from the families who owned it in 2011 for $78 million. After complaints by residents who filed a lawsuit against Chetrit for failing to "provide heat and hot water" and subjecting them to "hazardous dust," "collapsing ceilings," and creating a "serious fire safety hazard," he sold the property to a consortium who dealt with disgruntled residents by providing pay-outs and temporary housing arrangements off-site during construction. So far, the new owners have spent about $185 million in acquisition and renovation costs.
The article here.
The Warhol presents Television
24 June 2015: The Warhol museum will be presenting the '70s new wave band, Television, at the Carnegie Music Hall on 25 September 2015 at 8 pm. In addition to Tom Verlaine the current configuration of the band features Jimmy Rip on guitar (who replaced founding guitarist Richard Lloyd in 2004), Fred Smith on bass, and Billy Ficca on drums. The Carnegie Music Hall is located in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh - the area where the Warhola's Dawson Street home was located.
Collecting Contemporary 1960-2015:
Selections from the Schorr Collection
23 June 2015: "Collecting Contemporary, 1960-2015: Selections from the Schorr Collection," opens at the Princeton University Art Museum this Saturday, 27 June 2015, and runs until 20 September 2015. Includes work by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.
Thomas Keidrowski and James Warhola
22 June 2015: Thomas Kiedrowski, author of Andy Warhol’s New York City, and Andy Warhol's nephew, the illustrator and author James Warhola, will be speaking at The Palace in Stamford, Connecticut - on Friday 26 June at 8 pm.
Andy's Randy Summer
21 June 2015: "Andy's Randy Summer" ends next week (25 June) at Christie's. The "over 18 only" online auction is advertised by Christie's as "coinciding with LGBTQ Pride month" and features Warhol's photographs, drawings and prints "that together offer visual explorations of sexuality, desire and the body within the gay community." It includes Fire Island Beach Party (1982), Men in Pool (1982), images from his Ladies and Gentlemen drag series, a portrait of Victor Hugo (1976 Polaroid), Sex Parts screenprints (including the anal sex image) and quite a few others - most going for only a few thousand dollars.
YES! YES! YES! WARHOLMANIA IN MUNICH
20 June 2015: "YES!YES!YES! WARHOLMANIA IN MUNICH," a major festival of Warhol's films and art is taking place in Munich from 23 June to 28 October 2015, presented by the Museum Brandhorst and FILMFEST MÜNCHEN (#Warholmania). The museum will be exhibiting, for the first time, their entire collection of work by Warhol and there will be a large number of film screenings (curated by Glenn O'Brien and Katja Eichinger), panel discussions and other events.
Films to be screened include: Bike Boy, The Chelsea Girls, Lonesome Cowboys, San Diego Surf, Tarzan and Jane Regained, Sort of..., Camp, Screen Tests of Jane Holzer, Donyale Luna and Jack Smith; a special Edie Sedgwick program consisting of Beauty #2 and Outer and Inner Space; a Mario Montez program of Screen Test No. 2 (one of my personal favourites) and Mario Banana #1 and 2; a Velvet Underground program consisting of The Velvet Underground and Nico and the Screen Tests of Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale, Maureen Tucker and Nico and a Vinyl program including the Screen Tests of Larry Latreille, Gerard Malanga and Ondine.
Another program of films, "Beyond Warhol," chosen by Katja Eichinger, includes William Friedkin's Cruising (hilariously brilliant - who would have thought that they'd ever see Al Pacino snorting poppers on the dance floor of a gay disco after seeing someone get fisted in the backroom - clip here.
Eichinger's selection of films also includes Cocaine Cowboys which was filmed on Warhol's Montauk estate by a a real-life drug dealer (Tom Sullivan) and features a cameo appearance by Warhol. Also showing is Ulli Lommel's Blank Generation and even Spring Breakers by the brilliant Harmony Korine(with executive producer Jane Holzer.)
And if that isn't enough to to get you to book a flight NOW to Munich, the panel discussions are going to include Glenn O'Brien moderating a discussion with Jane Holzer, John Cale and Sleep star John Giorno.
And - in addition to the Museum exhibition and film screenings, there is also going to be an exhibition of photography by Bob Adelman from 19 June - 25 July at the Schirmer/Mosel Showroom in Munich. Adelman is the photographer who took the photos of the Warhol party at Al Roon's health club (see news archive).
More info on:
Bike Boy here.
The Chelsea Girls here.
Lonesome Cowboys here.
San Diego Surf here.
Tarzan and Jane: here.
Donyale Luna here.
Jack Smith here.
Screen Test No. 2 here.
In Living Color: Andy Warhol
and Contemporary Printmaking
19 June 2015: "In Living Color: Andy Warhol and Contemporary Printmaking" opens at the Tampa Museum of Art tomorrow.
Andy Warhol in Coast FM
18 June 2015: The remaining Warhol articles from the Coast FM & Fine Arts magazine (see previous story on The Truth Game) have been added to the Warhol Film Ads site, along with a number of other interesting articles from other publications - check the update list on the top of the main page here.
The Truth Game
17 June 2015: Alfredo Garcia has added a set of articles about Warhol from an extremely rare issue of Coast FM & Fine Arts magazine to his Warhol Film Ads site. The articles include one by John Hallowell who accompanied Warhol and a small group of superstars to Los Angeles at a time when Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey were talking to the press about making a film named after Hallowell's book The Truth Game.
The Truth Game trip to Los Angeles took place in May 1969 and was paid for by Columbia Studios. A 7 May 1969 article in Variety about Flesh and Lonesome Cowboys made reference to The Truth Game as "the next Warhol opus."
Kent E. Carroll ("More Structured, Less Scandalized Warhol Aiming for Wider Playoff," Variety, 7 May 1969):
The next Warhol opus, set to begin shooting on Los Angeles streets in about three weeks, is being financed by Michael Loughlin, producer of Joanna and new husband of Leslie Caron. All other pix were internally financed. The sum is $100,000 which included buying the title rights of John Hollowell's [sic] The Truth Game. According to Warhol, Caron, Clint Eastwood, Natalie Wood and Troy Donohue will all make brief appearances. Among the company of regulars the featured part wil be played by Candy Darling, a young man who attempts to appear as much as possible like a young woman. Laughlin will handle the distribution.
An earlier reference to the film was made in the 24 April issue of the Village Voice:
"Scenes" in The Village Voice, 24 April 1969, p. 55
Although The Truth Game was never made, Hallowell was credited with the idea behind Andy Warhol's Heat and plays a gossip columnist in that film. Warhol's boyfriend, Jed Johnson, and one of the editors of Heat, was part of Warhol's entourage when they visited L.A. for The Truth Game. (He's mentioned briefly in the Coast FM article.)
Also included from the same issue of Coast FM on the Warhol Film Ads site is a scathingly bitchy review of Warhol's films by Rex Reed, a more reasoned analysis of his films by Richard Whitehall and a fairly good filmography of Warhol's films, given the information known at the time.
Bailey on Warhol in Scotland
16 June 2015: A free screening of David Bailey's film on Andy Warhol, Bailey on... Warhol (in which Warhol explains the reason for his Death and Disaster series and why underground films are called "underground"), will be held at the Scottish National Gallery on 27 July 2015.
According to Warhol star Jane Holzer, star of Soap Opera (see below) David Bailey "created" her when he shot her for a Vogue fashion shoot in the summer of 1963:
Jane Holzer (1964):
Bailey is fantastic. Bailey created four girls that summer [of 1963]. He created Jean Shrimpton, he created me, he created Angela Howard and Susan Murray. There's no photographer like that in America. Avedon hasn't done that for a girl, Penn hasn't, and Bailey created four girls in one summer. He did some pictures of me for the English Vogue, and that was all it took... Some people say I look like a child, you know, Baby Jane. And, I mean, I don't know what I look like, I guess it's just 1964 Jewish.
Andy Warhol's Soap Opera
15 June 2015: Claire K. Henry of The Andy Warhol Film Project will be moderating a discussion about Andy Warhol's film, Soap Opera, starring Baby Jane Holzer and Sam Green, at the Whitney Museum in conjunction with the Jewish Museum's current exhibition, "Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television." Participating on the panel discussion will be the artist Alex Bag and Bruce Jenkins from the Art Institute of Chicago (and one of the numerous authors of the forthcoming second volume(s) of the film cat. rais.).
The panel discussion will take place on Saturday 18 July 2015 and will be preceeded by a screening of the film at 7 pm.
More on Andy Warhol's Soap Opera here.
The Late Drawings of Andy Warhol
14 June 2015: "The Late Drawings of Andy Warhol 1973-1987" opens at The Hyde Collection Art Museum on 21 June 2015 and continues until 27 September 2015.
More Sticky Fingers
13 June 2015: The Warhol museum has set up a display relating to the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers album, including the acetates of the mystery crotch (see below) used for the front cover. The Stones are due to play Pittsburgh on June 20th.
Andy Warhol's Montauk property to be sold for $85 million
12 June 2015: Warhol's Montauk property is back on the market - this time for $85 million. Paul Morrissey and Warhol bought the property for $235,000 in the 1970s. At that time Warhol owned considerably more property in Montauk than what is being sold now. After Warhol's death, part of his Montauk property became the Andy Warhol Nature Preserve (yes, nature preserve) and the rest went to Morrissey who sold it to J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler in 2007 for $27 million.
The art of Andy Warhol...
10 June 2015: Alfredo Garcia has added yet more fascinating articles to his Warhol Film Ads website - including this Weekend Telegraph article from 1965:
"The Art of Andy Warhol... an appraisal by Nicholas Mosley/Photos by David Franklin,"
The Weekend Telegraph, September 10, 1965
The Warhol Dollars
9 June 2015: A private collection of 21 works of art inspired by the U.S. Dollar will be auctioned at Sotheby's on July 1st and 2nd in London. The auction will include the only Warhol dollar painting to have been painted entirely by hand, One Dollar Bill (Silver Certificate), 1962 (est. £13-18m) as well as Warhol's Front and Back Dollar Bills, 1962-63 (est. £13-18m); Dollar Sign, 1983 (est. £4-6m) and Dollar Signs, 1981 (est. £4.5-6.5m).
Andy Warhol's Pantry
8 June 2015: Brian L. Frye, who wrote "The Dialectic of Obscenity" which contained one of the clearest and factually correct accounts of the controversy surrounding Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures - has written two additional essays with Warhol content that are available on the internet. "Andy Warhol's Pantry" examines Warhol’s use of food and food products in his paintings and sculptures and also explores the legal ramifications of copyright and trademark in his work. It can be downloaded here. A second essay, "Three Great Phonographers: Warhol, Nixon & Kaufman" can be downloaded here.
Joe Dallesandro responds re: Sticky Fingers
7 June 2015: Joe Dallesandro has reacted to the "whose crotch was it on the Sticky Fingers album controversy" (see June 4th below) which was picked up in yesterday's issue of the New York Post. The Post article notes that "while the model is definitely not Jagger, many people were under the impression that it was actor Joe Dallesandro, who starred in several Warhol films. But those who were in Warhol’s inner circle say otherwise."
Glenn O'Brien is quoted in the Post article as saying it was his crotch that appeared on the inside cover: "I knew it was me because it was my underwear!... [Warhol] just said it was for a Rolling Stones album cover. I was a huge fan, so I was pleased, and also I got paid $100. Not bad for 20 minutes’ work.”
Joe Dallesandro responds, "Regarding the NY Post story about the Sticky Finger cover and inside sleeve: The photos were from '69 taken by either Billy Name or Andy. No posing or paying money in 1969, $100.00 was 2 weeks salary at the Factory for a 40 hour week and a movie or two. Inside was most likely Jay Johnson or Ronnie Cutrone. You have to remember the dates and who was really there at the time. So today it could be anybody as long as they're still alive. When I die, who knows who it will be... And who cares anyway."
Deborah Kass
6 June 2015: The New York Times has reviewed Deborah Kass' "Most Wanted" show here.
Andy Warhol, graphiste
5 June 2015: The author of the LP cover cat. rais. (as well as the separate volumes of Warhol's complete commissioned magazine work and his posters), Paul Maréchal, will be exhibiting his Warhol collection at the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke during the summer. "Andy Warhol, graphiste" runs from 6 June to 27 September 2015.
Sticky Fingers
4 June 2015: The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers album, which featured Warhol's crotch shot on the cover, is being re-released next week. It has yet to be determined whose crotch was used - guesses include Joe Dallesandro who has claimed that it was his crotch on the cover, Glenn O'Brien (who claims his crotch was on the inside cover), Jay Johnson (doubtful), Corey Tippen (possibly) or an anonymous image pulled "out of a collection of junk photos" (plausibly).
Valerie Solanas
3 June 2015: The New York Daily News has reprinted their original 1968 article on the shooting of Andy Warhol here.
For more on Valerie Solanas, go here.
Mary Woronov
2 June 2015: Warhol star Mary Woronov continues to write a regular column on art for Artillery Magazine, published six times yearly. Her latest contribution, published last month, is an article on Egon Schiele:
Mary Woronov:
Artists like Schiele, Munch, Van Gogh, emerge in times of upheaval and rebellion. The ’60s was also one of these times. Along with the invention of the bomb, perennial war and nuclear power, Americans had decided to make their mark by eliminating the figure from art. But America did have one rebel gay artist who brought back the figure along with a few other American objects like the soup can, the car crash, the electric chair, the celebrity and even the Empire State Building. The new music was rock and roll, and the people managed to stop a war.
… After which art sank quietly into its conceptual grave.
The full article can be found here.
Pop Art in America
1 June 2015: "Pop Art in America" opened on Saturday, 30 May 2015, at the Foosaner Art Museum in Florida and continues until 30 August 2015. Chris Rodley's documentary on Warhol - Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture - will be shown at the museum on 16 July 2015. Details here.
Andy Warhol's Screen Tests
31 May 2015: Tonight is the final screening of Warhol's Screen Tests on the electronic billboards of Times Square. Download map here.
Willard Maas, Marie Menken and Charles Henri Ford
30 May 2015: The Film-makers' Cooperative is presenting a series of films by Willard Maas and Marie Menken at Le Petit Versailles in New York on Friday 5 June at 8:00 pm. In addition to being a filmmaker in her own right, Menken also appeared in Warhol's films, such as The Life of Juanita Castro and The Chelsea Girls. Maas was a poet in addition to being a filmmaker and was Gerard Malanga's faculty advisor at Wagner College when Gerard studied there. He was also, according to Gerard, the person who gave the blow job in Andy Warhol's Blow Job. Maas and Menken were old school - alcoholics rather than speed freaks.
The Co-op will also be screening Charles Henri Ford's film, Johnny Minotaur, on 10 June.
Andy Warhol for Sale in Prague
29 May 2015: The Prague Daily Monitor is reporting that "Andy Warhol's artefacts" are going to be sold in insolvency proceedings with regard to the bankruptcy of the Czech Makum gallery. According to the report, Sotheby's offered 18 million crowns "for the collection" but the minimum price being demanded is 32 million crowns. ($1=25.072 crowns). The article notes that "in the deal, the receiver cooperates with the Andy Warhol Museum of Contemporary Art in Medzilaborce," although it doesn't indicate the details of that "cooperation." Article here.
Fred McDarrah
28 May 2015: The Telegraph is running an article on Fred McDarrah's exhibition in New York which includes a slide show of photographs of Warhol and other pop icons. I can't rate McDarrah's photos high enough. His images of San Francisco, Greenwich Village, the Beats and the art world are classics. I notice on Amazon that you can get used copies of his book, Beat Generation: Glory Days in Greenwich Village, at bargain-basement prices. Get it. It includes the photos he took at the Cedar Street Tavern and The Club (including ones of Ginsberg and Kerouac at The Club) in the '50s; the outside of Club Bizarre in 1959 (above which Larry Rivers had a studio and where Warhol would later discover the Velvet Underground); a rare picture of the outside of the San Remo cafe that is mentioned in Popism and in so many biographies of artists and writers; the outside of the Kettle of Fish where Edie met Dylan; and Taylor Mead with the manager of the Bagel Shop where Mead was discovered by Ron Rice who cast him in The Flower Thief. Looking at McDarrah's photographs makes everything seem so real - these artists really existed, were human like us, went to clubs like us and goofed around like us - revealing history as being more-or-less a record of the gossip (snapshots) of their lives.
The Telegraph article is here.
"Fred W. McDarrah: The Artist's World" opened at at the Steven Kasher Gallery on 24 April 2015 and continues until 6 June 2015. Details here. Not to be missed.
Warhol Underground
27 May 2015: Fred McDarrah's photographs of Warhol and his crowd are also included in the "Warhol Underground" exhibition that opens at the Centre Pompidou in Metz on 1 July 2015 and runs until 23 November 2015. The exhibition will focus on Andy Warhol's relation to avant-garde dance and music and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Warhol meeting The Velvet Underground.
The Most Beautiful Boys, Al Roon's Health Club,
Antoine, Orion and Cavalier
26 May 2015: A number of new items have been added to the Warhol Film Ads website. They include a chapter from a John Gruen book, The New Bohemia, which is interesting because there is a rare mention of Andy Warhol's film, The Thirteen Most Beautiful Men (aka The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys) - the film that led to Warhol making what became known as the Screen Tests and which was also linked to his Thirteen Most Wanted Men series of paintings. The Most Beautiful Boys/Men film was never shown publicly, although a clip of Freddy Herko from the film may have been screened at a Film-Makers' Cinematheque event. (See: The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys (1964-66).
Also of interest is the feature from a 1967 issue of Pageant magazine about a trip to a "turkish bath" by Warhol and his superstars. The pictures are actually from 1965 and were taken at Al Roon's Health Club in New York. A fuller selection of photos from the session appears on the website of the photographer, Bob Adelman, here.
Edie Sedgwick on left page and Gerard Malanga
dancing on the right page at Al Roon's Health Club
(Photos by Bob Adelman in Pageant magazine)
Al Roon was a gym trainer who owned a number of health clubs frequented by celebrities and used for performance pieces in New York, as remembered by his son:
Anthony J. Roon, MD (son of Al Roon):
Al Roon was my father. He was very famous in the era of 1935 to 1976. He was one of the early pioneers in the health club business in New York. His early career was spurred by successes in weight lifting, wrestling (legitimate), and body building. He trained many celebrities starting with the Ziegfeld Follies, and including Andy Warhol, Lena Horne. He trained fighters Like his friend Rocky Marciano. At one time there were 7 venues, including a health spa in upstate New York. He wrote for King features and spoke often on radio and television. Many television programs and movies were filmed at the gyms. He passed away in 1976 and the health clubs were then closed a few years later. His partner in business was his devoted brother Jesse Roon.
A short history of Roon's career is given on the ancestry.com website:
Al Roon, born Alexander Roon (1902-1976), was the owner and operator of the Al Roon health clubs, most popular from the 1940's to shortly after his death in 1976. His clubs, which consisted of a men's branch at the Riverside Plaza Hotel, and a women's branch at the Ansonia Hotel, were a frequent hangout of Andy Warhol's entourage and other counterculturalists of the day. The most memorable performance there was a 1965 swimming pool piece called Washes; starring David Whitney, Al Hansen, Alex Hay, Henry Geldzahler, Sarah Dalton, Robert Rauschenberg, and famous pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, with direction from Claes Oldenberg. Roon himself was most known for getting the scorn of various female celebrities, such as Tallulah Bankhead and Lana Turner to name a few, and Skitch Henderson (future bandleader of the Tonight Show and the then-husband of Faye Emerson, who was also mentioned) for criticizing their bodies in his 1951 pamphlet 'The 10 Most Beautiful Women in America If They Would Only Lose 10 Pounds.'
[Note: Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein are not mentioned in the cast listing of Washes.] (COA569)
Adelman's photos of Warhol and his entourage are not photos of Washes, which took place at Al Roon's Health Club in New York on 22 - 24 May 1965, but Oldenburg's comments on the club and how he came to conceive Washes, provides insight into the type of place that it was:
Claes Oldenburg:
I wanted to do a piece in a swimming pool and the title suggested itself - Washes. Then the problem was to find a swimming pool and to get the thing in motion. It took a long time to find a swimming pool. Finally Alan Solomon located the pool of Al Roon's Health Club, and that became a reality. I enrolled for classes there, and I went there and I laid around the pool, I swam, I tried all the services, I was massaged, and all the time I was just studying the possiblilities of the place for a happening...
It was really a color piece; it was a painting-type piece. Many of my pieces are more like dance or more like theatre, but this was a piece in which the visual was very important, like a painting. The most important element was the reet water. And "Washes" of course was reference to "water colors." so everything that was done was done mostly for a color effect, thought there was a dance element, and the dance was shaped by the obstacle of the water -- you can only move so fast in the water. It creates a certain kind of dance. (COA246)
Other additions to the Warhol Film Ads website are a Penthouse magazine article which mentions Antoine's visit with Warhol - a short film of Antoine's visit to New York is on You Tube here.
The article also includes one of the 'mole people' Orion who was also rumoured to be a witch and appeared in **** (Four Stars). Also added to the site is a Cavalier magazine interview with Warhol.
The Warhol Film Ads website is here.
From Marilyn to Mao: Andy Warhol's Famous Faces
25 May 2015: "From Marilyn to Mao: Andy Warhol's Famous Faces" opens at the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina on 12 June 2015 and runs until 13 September.
Andy Warhol: Stars of the Silver Screen
24 May 2015: "Andy Warhol: Stars of the Silver Screen" opens at TIFF Bell Lightbox on 30 October 2015 and runs until 24 January 2016.
Details here.
Peter Hujar
23 May 2015: A number of interesting Warhol-related photographs by Peter Hujar appear on the Whitney page for him. These include photos of Andy Warhol, Candy Darling on her deathbed, and James Waring. Also of interest are the photos of "neo-Dada" artist May Wilson, Diana Vreeland, Divine and other cult figures. Hujar died in 1987 from AIDS-related pneumonia.
Go here.
Andy Warhol Retrospective
22 May 2015: The Andy Warhol retrospective, originally planned to open at the Whitney next year, has been moved to 2018. It is going to be a thematically arranged exhibition curated by Donna De Salvo.
Andy Warhol's "Master Printers"
21 May 2015: The Hamilton-Selway Fine Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition called "Unseen Warhol." The name of the exhibition, "Unseen Warhol," is the name of a book that was copyright in 1996 and has nothing to do with the exhibition.
The exhibition included an event where customers were invited to "to get “Warhol-ed” by two people referred to as Warhol's "Master Printers." On another site, one of the "Master Printers" also claims to have worked with Robert Rauschenberg, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Scavullo.
According to the Hamilton-Selway press release, "both artists have joined forces to offer our clients the rare opportunity to commission a one-of-a-kind Warhol-style portrait."On the gallery's Facebook page, the gallery offers "commissioned Warhol-like portraits on site."
The event at the gallery featuring the two people referred to as Warhol's "Master Printers" is covered on the gallery's website here: In the article they talk about "working with Andy at the legendary Factory." The legendary Factory is the silver Factory that existed in the '60s. These people are not from the '60s. By the time of the period they suggest they served as Warhol's "Master Printers," Warhol had stopped calling his offices the factory.
They may have worked for the person who did Warhol's screening, Rupert Smith, but that does not make them Warhol's "Master Printers." Rupert had his own studio. It was not part of Warhol's offices. Yet the director of the gallery is quoted in the press release as saying "Rarely has the public had the opportunity to hear the Warhol story by the people who worked hand in hand with the pop art legend."
Viva
20 May 2015: Criterion is releasing Lion's Love - the Agnès Varda film starring Viva - on 11 August 2015 - as part of a box set, Eclipse Series 43: Agnès Varda in California. Pre-orders are being accepted here. (Thanks VP.)
A No Man Show: An Evening with Andy Warhol (the puppet)
19 May 2015: The Museum Brandhorst will be presenting a puppet show, A No Man Show: An Evening with Andy Warhol, on 28 June 2015. Details here.
Deborah Kass' Most Wanted
18 May 2015: Deborah Kass' America’s Most Wanted, 1998-1999 opens at Sargent's Daughters in two days - on Wednesday 20 May - and runs until 28 June 2015. Kass' work references Warhol's 13 Most Wanted Men, with curators in place of criminals. Included is Donna De Salvo of the Whitney and Robert Storr, previously a Senior Curator at MoMA. Kass is on the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts and is probably best known for her pop paintings of Barbra Streisand as Yentl. She is represented by Vincent Fremont (ex-Vice President of Andy Warhol Enterprises) and the Paul Kasmin Gallery. Her website is here.
Details of the exhibition here.
Andy Warhol: Myths and Legends
17 May 2015: Bring a can of Campbell's soup to today's "Souper Sunday Free Family Day" at the Art Museum of South Texas and it will be donated to the Food Bank of Corpus Christi. The event is being held in conjunction with their current Warhol exhibition, "Andy Warhol: Myths and Legends" (8 May - 18 July 2015). A lunch was held on 8 May to open the exhibition with Missy and Wes Cochran.
Details of the "Souper Sunday" here.
Andy Warhol: The Photographs
16 May 2015: There will be a closing party tonight for "Andy Warhol: The Photographs" at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach. Details here.
Andy Warhol's Mona Lisa
15 May 2015: Footage of yesterday's auction of Andy Warhol's Colored Mona Lisa for $50 million can be found here.
The work was known just as Mona Lisa during the 1960s. Its first exhibition in a public gallery was at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, D.C. as part of "The Popular Image" exhibition.
The Chelsea Girls and I, A Man in Los Angeles
14 May 2015: Alfredo García has made some additions to his fascinating Warhol Film Ads site. In the 7 April 1967 section, he's added two L.A. Free Press ads - one for The Chelsea Girls at the Cinema Theater and another announcing "Mark Davidson turns on Andy Warhol" on Channel 9.
Under 16 February 1968 he's added an article and ad on the "heterosexual Warhol movie," I, A Man, at the Cinematheque 16 in Los Angeles.
David James has written written about the Cinema Theater and Cinematheque 16 in his excellent book, The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles. About the Cinema Theater he writes the following:
In the early 1960s the Cinema Theatre was one of half a dozen art houses in Los Angeles, part of the Art Theatre Guild, a national chain of twenty-nine theaters owned by Louis K. Sher. Twenty-three-year old Mike Getz, Sher's nephew and its manager, was supplementing the increasingly remunerative exploitation market with first-run exposure for the French New Wave and independent American features such as The Connection. Approached by John Fles, a local poet and critic who had for several years been screening experimental films from the National Film Board of Canada and the New York underground at the Unicorn coffeehouse on Sunset Strip, Getz agreed to allow him to begin midnight screenings at the Cinema Theatre. By this time, Fles had assembled an extensive mailing list, to which he announced the screening of two recently completed works, Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man and Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures. Fles's mailer read, "October 12, 471 years ago, Columbus discovered America. Today you discover the New American Cinema!" The term "New American Cinema" had been current in New York for at least two years, and the midnight screenings at the Charles and Bleeker [sic] Street theatres in new York were sufficiently renowned in Los Angeles to attract to the Cinema Theatre a crowd estimated at five hundred by Arthur Knight, then a USC professor and occasional critic for the Los Angeles Times. (DJM222) [See also essay on Sleep.]
Louis K. Sher was also the founder of Sherpix which would later distribute Flesh and Lonesome Cowboys.
About the Cinematheque 16, James writes:
In the mid-1960s Los Angeles's alternative film culture was so strong that the eight-hundred-seat Cinema Theatre [where Sleep had made its L.A. premiere] was selling out every Saturday and Sunday night, and a parallel venue opened on Sunset Strip in June 1966. In 1964, Robert Lippard, an exploitation producer, had bought a theater with only 16 mm capability, intending to show nudie-cuties, but when Sunset Strip boomed as a mecca for the hippie culture, these proved unprofitable. Lewis Teague, an NYU graduate in film studies who had come to Los Angeles on an apprentice director program at Universal and had in fact directed an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour for television, offered to manage it as an art house. Calling it Cinematheque 16, Teague began with weekly programs alternating between European art films and the emerging American avant-garde. The art films proved as unsuccessful as the nudie-cuties, but when advertised as "Psychedelic Film Trips," films by Brakhage Emshwiller, later Warhol, and locals including John and James Whitney, Stanton Kaye, and Peter Mays immediately knit into the local music and drug cultures and became very successful, easily sustaining a week's run for each program and, in the case of the Warhol films, becoming very profitable. Teague supplemented the regular schedules with open screenings (to which Jim Morrison brought his student films), and the other theater became an integral part of the Strip culture. Noting Teague's success, Frank Woods, a theatrical entrepreneur and producer, bought the theater and opened another Cinematheque 16 in Pasadena, which quickly failed, and in San Francisco, which became as successful as the one on Sunset Strip. In the late 1960s the Cinematheque 16 screenings and especially the midnight screenings at the Cinema Theatre were the sustaining institutions of the Los Angeles counterculture. (DJM225) [See also essay on Bike Boy.]
Third-graders do the Factory
13 May 2015: Third graders at the Dutchess Day School in the Hudson Valley - not far from Poughkeepsie where Billy Name was born - are paying homage to Andy Warhol by exhibiting paintings they created in the style of Warhol at an exhibition called "The Factory" - now on show at the Berkshire Hathaway Home Services gallery space, 6384 Mill Street, until 30 May. Details here.
Yoko Ono
12 May 2015: "Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971" opens on the sixth floor of MoMA on 17 May 2015 and continues until 7 September 2015. A great picture of Yoko, John Lennon and Andy Warhol by David Bourdon can be found here.
Although not part of this show, in 1971 Yoko invited Andy to participate in her exhibition, Water Talk, and Warhol produced a video involving a water cooler which was shown on a monitor during the exhibition with a copy of the videocassette displayed next to it:
From Andy Warhol 365 Takes by the staff of the Andy Warhol Museum:
Andy Warhol's only intentionally produced piece of 'video art' came about when Yoko Ono invited him to participate in her exhibition entitled Water Talk, held at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, in October 1971. The invitation asked that Warhol and other invited artists 'produce with her a water sculpture, by submitting a water container or idea of one which would form half of the sculpture. Yoko will supply the other half - water." For the project, Warhol chose to create a videotape - a single 32 minute take of a water cooler from a fixed camera position, the soundtrack consisting of a group of friends, including himself and Paul Morrissey, gossiping around the water cooler at the Factory. At the exhibition, Water was shown on a monitor and a videocassette copy was displayed alongside. Yoko Ono had wanted to immerse the cassette in water as per the premise of the show, but Warhol refused.
Water, 1971/ 1/2" videotape, black and white, sound, 32 min.
Artist Rooms: Andy Warhol
11 May 2015: "Artist Rooms: Andy Warhol" will be at the Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery from 16 October 2015 to 31 January 2016.
Rob Pruitt and Peter Brant
10 May 2015: The Brant Foundation Art Study Center is hosting a private party tonight to celebrate the opening of "Rob Pruitt's 50th Birthday." Pruitt was the creator of The Andy Monument that graced the streets of New York (See "The Andy Warhol statue is unveiled in New York.") His work was also included at the most recent Venice Biennale.
The Brant Foundation is headed by Peter Brant who is the on-again-off-again-on-again owner of Interview magazine. Brant became an owner of Interview in the early seventies after Fred Hughes negotiated the sale of Interview shares belonging to Jerome Hill and his boyfriend Charles Rydell, to Brant and Joe Allen. In 1975 Brant gave up those shares in exchange for financing the appropriately titled film, Andy Warhol's Bad. According to Bob Colacello, it was "another complicated deal... though I believe it involved some paintings. (BC102)
In the summer of 1989 Hughes sold Interview back to Peter and his wife Sandy for $12 million. (BC503) Brant divorced Sandy in 1995 after fathering a child with supermodel Stephanie Seymour. According to the New York Times, "His former wife started a relationship with Interview’s editor at the time, Ingrid Sischy."
Brant's new wife, Stephanie Seymour, had previously been involved with Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses fame. In August 1993, Axl sued Seymour for assault and for refusing to return $100,000 worth of jewels. Seymour denied assault although she admitted that she may have "grabbed his testicles." ("Bye Bye Love," People Magazine, 18 July 1994, No. 3)
Stephanie filed for divorce from Brant in 2009, alleging that Brant was too controlling. Brant claimed that she had cheated on him and abused drugs and alcohol. In 2011 they reconciled after Stephanie gave him a Navajo blanket - a "cherished memento."
In addition to being head of the Brant Foundation, Peter Brant is also the chairman and chief executive officer of the White Birch Paper Company. He is also on the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A., a member of the chairman's council of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the producer of a number of films - Andy Warhol's L'Amour, Andy Warhol's Bad, Basquiat, Pollock, Andy Warhol: A Documentary (in conjunction with the PBS) and The Homesman starring Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep.
Details of the party can be found at: nowhere. (If you don't already know them, you haven't been invited.)
Blake Gopnik in Canada
10 May 2015: Blake Gopnik will be speaking on the subject of Andy Warhol and Textiles on Wednesday 3 June at the 40th anniversary of the Textile Museum of Canada. The talk is being presented in conjunction with their current exhibition, "Artist Textiles: From Picasso to Warhol ." A fundraising dinner is also planned on the same evening.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now's the Time
9 May 2015: "Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now's the Time" closes at the Gallery of Ontario tomorrow and a special closing celebration will take place at the gallery tonight from 5:30 to 10:00 pm. Included in the show are some of the collaborations that Basquiat did with Warhol such as Don't Tread on Me. An exhibition catalogue was published in February.
Details here. http://www.ago.net/basquiat. See also here.
Youth invades The Warhol
8 May 2015: Youth will be invading The Warhol museum tonight with their "unique take on Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable," including bands, a fashion show, screenprinting and other "surprises."
Billy Name
7 May 2015: A short article on Billy Name appeared in yesterday's Independent in the U.K. here.
More about Billy Name here.
Andy Warhol Instant Video
6 May 2015: Amazon has added a considerable amount of Warhol-related movies to their "instant video" section so that viewers can "rent" them for as little as $1.99. These include the non-Warhol film, Ciao! Manhattan starring Edie Sedgwick; the Merv Griffin episode with Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick; the Candy Darling documentary Beautiful Darling; the documentary about the Chelsea Hotel, Chelsea on the Rocks; The Cool School: Story of the Ferus Art Gallery; Blank Generation; A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams & the Warhol Factory; the classic Painters Painting directed by Emile de Antonio; Andy Warhol's Bad and The Driver's Seat with Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol. Also, there are some great offers on Craig Highberger's classic documentary about his friend Jackie Curtis, Superstar in a House Dress. The film played many of the major gay and cult film festivals at the time of its initial release and was later brought out as a book and DVD. (The book includes the DVD.) Highly recommended.
Andy Warhol au Château de Waroux
5 May 2015: An Andy Warhol exhibition is opening at the Château de Waroux in Belgium on 13 November 2015 and continues until July 2016. Details here.
Empire State Building light show
4 May 2015: Footage of the underwhelming Empire State Building light show (for the opening of the Whitney and the ESB's birthday) has been posted on the building's You Tube channel here.
Although the light show was supposed to be inspired by specific works of art (see below), it's difficult to see how the lights were related to the art. Another version of an Empire State Building light show was featured on the "Good Day New York" television show featuring Donna De Salvo as one of the guests. In that version slides were projected over a photo of the building. That footage can be seen here.
I think I preferred the "Good Day New York" version. At least we got De Salvo's limited commentary about the works. I think they should have just projected a giant image of Donna De Salvo onto the Empire State Building lecturing on modern American Art. Watching the t.v. show, I wondered sometimes whether they were selling a museum or a used car. I forgot how expensive American art museums are. Although admission to the Whitney is $3 less than MoMA, it is still more than twenty times the cost of admission to U.K. museums. Entry to museums in the U.K. is free - including the Tate Modern, the National Gallery and the wonderful British Museum.
Watching the ESB footage made me wonder why nobody else has published their videos of the event on You Tube or their footage of the Times Square Screen Tests for that matter. Is it because the powers that be are not permitting any footage of these public events, other than the official footage, to be posted on You Tube? Or is it due to a lack of interest? Viewers won't "share" the official footage - they want personal footage. It was a public event after all (although the lights of the ESB probably did look more impressive filtered through a glass of champagne at the private viewing at the Whitney.)
Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life
3 May 2015: "Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life" opens at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on 27 October 2015 and continues until 10 January 2016. It will be followed by "International Pop" - see below - which will run 24 February 2016 - 15 May 2016.
James Rosenquist and Campbell's Soup
3 May 2015: This is the last week for for the "James Rosenquist: Illustrious Works on Paper, Illuminating Paintings" exhibition which closes 9 May 2015 at the OSU Museum of Art. Rosenquist's Screen Test is one of the Screen Tests chosen for projection in Times Square. According to art dealer Allan Stone, he (Stone) had offered Rosenquist, Warhol and Robert Indiana a three-man show prior to Warhol's Soup Can show at the Ferus, but he had been turned down.
Like Warhol, Rosenquist used product imagery in his paintings - including painting a dish of Campbell's tomato soup "long before" Warhol's Soup Cans.
James Rosenquist (quoted in "Nowhere"):
When I began using advertising imagery in my paintings it was never a question of beating advertisers at their own game. It was simply the idea of doing something that had the same force as advertising, using their techniques and bizarre imagery. I never used a brand name. The closest I ever came to displaying a product was when I painted a big dish of Campbell's tomato soup with parts of male and female images floating in it. This was long before Andy Warhol's soup can. It was called In the Red, meaning broke - the average bourgeois family that is always broke.
Gerard Malanga
2 May 2015: The Catherine Smulders gallery in Paris will be showing work by Warhol star Gerard Malanga at Photo London 2015 in London - taking place 21-24 May (with a preview on the 20th) at Somerset House.
Details of Photo London here.
Details of Malanga exhibition here.
Screen Test in Times Square & TV at Jewish Museum
1 May 2015: Don't miss the Screen Tests tonight in Times Square - starts just before midnight at 11.57 pm (see below).
Also, Andy Warhol is one of the artists included in the Jewish Museum's excellently curated "Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television" exhibition which opens today and continues until 20 September 2015. Included is Warhol's TV Guide cover featuring Barbra Feldon from Get Smart.
Details of the exhibition here.
TV Guide 5-11 March 1966
Superstar celebrates 84th birthday
30 April 2015: While Warhol's Screen Tests are projected in Times Square, one of Warhol's earliest and most famous superstars will be celebrating their 84th birthday tomorrow night - 1 May 2015 - at another midtown location. The birthday of the Empire State Building (along with the opening of the Whitney) will be celebrated with a massive light show featuring twelve iconic artworks as interpreted by ex-Pink Floyd lighting designer, Marc Bricman. The event will begin on 8 pm on 1 May and end at 2 am the following morning. Works by Andy Warhol, Georgia O'Keefe, Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko and others will be featured. A private view of the light show will be held at the Whitney on the outdoor terraces.
Details here.
Screen Tests revisited
29 April 2015: Only two more days to the screenings of Andy Warhol's Screen Tests in Times Square. I've revised my essay on the Screen Tests, adding comments on each of the tests that are going to be shown. Re-visiting the Screen Tests reminded me of all the work and care that Callie Angell put into cataloguing and writing about them. The first volume of the film cat. rais. is an amazing piece of work. She is part of the history of the films. I think Warhol would have loved having the films screened in Times Square - not only does the Square represent New York to the rest of the world, it's so close to where the original Factory was located. R.I.P. Warhol. R.I.P. Callie.
My revised essay is here.
BBC: Warhol and Fashion
28 April 2015: Sara McCorquodale has written an interesting account of Warhol's influence on fashion - particularly in regard to Warhol's Soup Can dress and the Souper Dress that was produced not by Warhol but by Campbell's. You could buy one by sending in $1 and two Campbell's soup labels. Essay on the BBC website here.
The New Whitney
27 April 2015: The new Whitney opens in four days. See: http://whitney.org/About/NewBuilding. And whatever happened to the plan for a Warhol retrospective next year at the Whitney that was mentioned in the film cat. rais. press release here.
Warhol and Mapplethorpe: Guise & Dolls
26 April 2015: "Warhol and Mapplethorpe: Guise & Dolls" will open at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art on 17 October 2015 and run until 24 January 2016. The exhibition will focus on New York in the 70s and 80s and will include Andy Warhol's Ladies and Gentlemen series of drag queen portraits as well as Christopher Mako's photos of Warhol in drag. Work by Mapplethorpe will include images of Patti Smith and weightlifter Lisa Lyon.
An exhibition catalogue, edited by Patricia Hickson and costing $60, will be published concurrently with the exhibition. Contributors to the catalogue include Jonathan D. Katz, Tirza True Latimer, Vincent Fremont, Eileen Myles and Christopher Makos.
Details here.
Tracing Outlines
25 April 2015: Tracing Outlines, the documentary on the gallery that Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein and others frequented while they were students in Pittsburgh, is going to be shown for the first time at the Carnegie Museum of Art on 21 May 2015. The Outlines Gallery is probably where Warhol first met John Cage - see "When Did Andy Warhol Meet John Cage?" and "Notes on John Cage, Erik Satie's Vexations and Andy Warhol's Sleep."
Details on the screening here.
Andy Warhol's Shadows in Paris
24 April 2015: Andy Warhol's Shadows - a 130m long installation of 102 paintings - opens at the Le Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris on 2 October 2015 and runs until the 7th of February 2016. They were previously on exhibit at MOCA in Los Angeles from 20 September 20 2014 to February 15, 2015.
During the MOCA exhibition the Shadows were likened to Rothko's work - particularly the Seagram murals at the Tate Modern in London. MOCA Director, Philippe Vergne, was quoted in the L.A. Times as saying that Warhol had given up painting by the late 1960s but after attending the opening of the Pompidou Center in France, Warhol "fell in love with art and painting again, and rushed back to New York” to create what, according to Vergne, Warhol referred to as "disco Rothko" for Studio 54. L.A. Times journalist Ellen Olivier writes "Like Mark Rothko’s paintings, which were created for Manhattan’s Four Seasons restaurant but never installed, Vergne said Warhol’s disco décor didn’t wind up at the artist’s favorite disco palace either; it was acquired instead by the Dia Art Foundation."
Andy Warhol's Screen Tests in Times Square
23 April 2015: Ten of Andy Warhol's Screen Tests are going to be shown in Times Square every night during the month of May 2015. The films will be shown on Times Square's electronic billboards from 11:57-midnight and will include Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Lou Reed, Harry Smith and Edie Sedgwick.
The Warhol
22 April 2015: More changes at the Andy Warhol Museum (aka The Warhol) - Kenny Marshall has been appointed the Director of Exhibitions. Marshall previously worked at installing and helping to curate a number of shows at venues such as the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He has at least two piercings. (Any more anywhere else?)
The Warhol is also putting on a Philip Pearlstein exhibition beginning 30 May which will include at least one of the paintings (Merry-go-round) that were reproduced in the 16 June 1941 issue of Life magazine in an article about the Carnegie Institute's 14th annual show of high school art sponsored by Scholastic Magazine.
Details of the exhibition here.
And The Warhol is also putting on Madeline Peyroux tomorrow at the The Carnegie Lecture Hall. (Very Highly Recommended)
Happy Birthday Edie Sedgwick
21 April 2015: To commemorate Edie Sedgwick on her birthday yesterday, Vogue magazine published a memorial on its website here. Edie would be 72 years old if she were still alive today.
Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans at MoMA
20 April 2015: While the disastrous Bjork exhibition continues to take up much of the main space of the Museum of Modern Art, a Warhol exhibition - "Andy Warhol: Campbell's Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967" - opens on the second floor, in the Paul J. Sachs Prints and Illustrated Books Galleries, this Thursday (25 April 2015). For the first time, the 32 Campbell Soup Cans first exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in 1962 will be displayed in a single line similar to the way they were displayed at the Ferus in Los Angeles. The exhibition that put Warhol on the art map took place in L.A., not New York. I wonder what would have happened if L.A. hadn't discovered Warhol. (For more about the Soup Cans, see "The Origin of Andy Warhol's Soup Cans or The Synthesis of Nothingness.")
19 April 2015: The new documentary about Danny Fields, Danny Says, (directed by Brendan Toller) was shown Thursday at Cimmfest - a four day festival of film and music in Chicago that ends today.
Danny Says director, Brendan Toller (@btollhaus)
poses with the Sticky Fingers album cover
Post-production on the film was paid for through a successful Kickstarter campaign - the film was first shown at SXSW on 18 March. Press from the SXSW screening can be found at here.
The trailer for Danny Says can be found on the Cimmfest website here. A recent interview with Danny Fields about the film is here.
3-D Warhol: The Sculptural Work of Andy Warhol
18 April 2015: Books about Andy Warhol often promise new information about the artist but fail to come up with the goods or end up making mountains out of mole hills. But there is a book coming out in November on Warhol's sculpture (yes, sculpture) which really does deliver new information about the artist and his working techniques - 3-D Warhol: The Sculptural Work of Andy Warhol by Thomas Morgan-Evans. The book represents more than three years of research on Warhol's sculptures by the author who holds a PhD in Philosophy (History of Art) from the University of London and in 2013 gave a talk on Warhol's Silver Clouds at the Henry Moore Institute. Amazon is accepting pre-orders now for his Warhol book. Highly recommended.
Love is Enough: William Morris and Andy Warhol
17 April 2015: The Andy Warhol/William Morris exhibition, "Love is Enough: William Morris and Andy Warhol," is at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery from 25 April 2015 to 6 September 2015. It had previously been at Modern Art Oxford from 6 December 2014 to 8 March 2015. (Photos of the Oxford exhibition here.
Why an exhibition of Andy Warhol and William Morris? What does the one have to do with the other? The answer has to do with the artist Jeremy Deller who curated the exhibition. Morris and Warhol are his "two greatest artistic influences." Deller visited Warhol's offices in New York in 1986 after being groped by him at the Ritz:
From "Jeremy Deller: my summer in Andy Warhol’s Factory," The Guardian, 3 December 2014:
One day when Jeremy Deller was 20, he heard that Andy Warhol was going to be at the opening of a show in London. “I thought, ‘I’m going to go and get my picture taken with him.’” It was 1986 and Deller was an art history graduate. Once he got to the Anthony d’Offay Gallery, he watched Warhol “sitting at a big table signing stuff”. Then he was approached by one of Warhol’s entourage who invited him to the artist’s hotel room. “They said, ‘Come to the Ritz tomorrow night, room 321.’”
So the following night, he found himself with his mate Chris – “I thought I needed back up, I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for” – outside room 321. Fighting back giggles, they knocked on the door and were let into a room in which Warhol and four or five other men were watching The Benny Hill Show with the sound turned down, while listening to Roxy Music’s greatest hits.
It was a pivotal moment in Deller’s life. “We just spent a couple of hours there, with him taking pictures of us. We had these hats and stuff in our bag and we started trying them on. It was innocent fun until he groped me.” What? In the Ritz? “I took it as a compliment. I was quite flattered. I know it’s not politically correct to say so.”
The meeting led to an invitation for Deller to visit Warhol that summer at the Factory in New York. “I went into it with my eyes open.” Did he grope you again? “No. There was never any repeat of what happened.”
Details of the Birmingham here.
BBC clip of Deller talking about Warhol here.
Lou Reed's sister defends the family
16 April 2015: In an astonishingly frank article, Lou Reed's sister, Merrill Reed Weiner, has attempted to set "the record straight" regarding Lou's family life including his "nervous breakdown" which resulted in shock therapy. Describing their family as "an average middle class Jewish family," she defends her parents as "blazing liberals" who consented to Lou's shock therapy because he "was depressed, weird, anxious, and avoidant" and not because he had "confessed to homosexual urges." She asks whether their parents made a "mistake in not challenging the doctor's recommendation for ECT" and answers "Absolutely. I have no doubt they regretted it until the day they died. But the family secret continued. We absolutely never spoke about the treatments, then or ever."
The article, A Family in Peril: Lou Reed’s Sister Sets the Record Straight About His Childhood, can be found here.
Dubliner joins staff of the Andy Warhol Museum
15 April 2015: A Dubliner, Bartholomew Ryan, is joining the staff of the Andy Warhol Museum as the Milton Fine Curator of Art on 18 May 2015. He will be replacing Nicholas Chambers who left the job in November to return to his native Australia. Ryan previously worked for the Walker Art Center and co-curated their current "International Pop" exhibition (see below). Ryan is a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin and also studied in the states at Bard. In 2013 he curated the "9 Artists" group exhibition (Yael Bartana, Liam Gillick, Renzo Martens, Bjarne Melgaard, Nastio Mosquito, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Hito Steyerl, and Danh Vo) and co-curated "Painter Painter" which included work by Matt Connors, Sarah Crowner, Fergus Feehily, Jay Heikes, Rosy Keyser, Charles Mayton, Dianna Molzan, Joseph Montgomery, Katy Moran, Alex Olson, Scott Olson, Zak Prekop, Dominik Sittig, Lesley Vance, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung.
A short interview with Bartholomew Ryan can be found in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at: "Dublin native named Warhol Museum's new Milton Fine curator."
Re-writing Warhol
14 April 2015: Liz Worth is rewriting Warhol. She has turned a: a novel into a series of poems to be published this autumn. About her book, Rewriting Andy Warhol, Liz says that she "created 451 poems out of Andy Warhol’s a: A Novel. Each page was created into a poem, and each poem uses only words and phrases from its specified page. That project started as a blog and is being published in book form by BookThug this fall." A sample of her work can be found here. See also an interview with her in Zouch about her next project based on Twin Peaks here.
International Pop vs. The World Goes Pop
13 April 2015: The Walker Art Center has artistically "gazumped" the Tate Modern with their International Pop exhibition which opened at the Walker on Saturday, 11 April 2015. The Tate Modern is planning a similar exhibition to open on 17 September 2015 called "The World Goes Pop," about Pop from an international perspective. From the description of the Tate show, however, the definition of what constitutes Pop seems stretched to the limits - or even beyond the limits - whereas the Walker show concentrates on the known antecedents of Pop and art that was categorized by pre-Pop labels such as New Realism or Neo-Dada. "Pop" was formally accepted as the name of the new art movement at a symposium held at MoMA on 13 December 1962.
The international movements related to Pop - examples of which are featured in the Walker exhibition - include Nouveau Réalisme in France, Concretism and Neo-Concretism (Brazil), the Art of Things (Argentina), Anti-Art (Japan) and Capitalist Realism (Germany).
"International Pop" has taken five years of planning and features more than 175 artworks by 100 artists from 20 countries. In addition to Warhol, the artists in the Walker show include Peter Blake, Rosalyn Drexler, Erró, León Ferrari, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Tanaami Keiichi, Yves Klein,Marisol, Marta Minujín, Claes Oldenburg, Wanda Pimentel, Michaelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Niki de Saint Phalle, Okamoto Shinjiro Wayne Thiebaud, Jean Tinguely and others. Curated by Bartholomew Ryan and Darsie Alexander.
Screenings to be held in conjunction with the Walker show include films by Derek Boshier, Andy Warhol, Jean Luc-Godard, Tadanori Yokoo, George Kuchar, Guy Debord, William Klein, Ken Russell, Bruce Conner, Peter Whitehead and Niki de Saint Phalle.
Definitely not to be missed.
Smash Cut
12 April 2015: Smash Cut, Brad Gooch's memoir of New York in the '80s and his relationship with his lover, Howard Brookner, is to be published on Monday. Brookner directed the film, Burroughs: the Movie and is mentioned in the latest Burroughs biography by Barry Miller: "Brookner decided that for his senior thesis he would like to make a full-length documentary about Burroughs. Bill agreed, a contract was signed, and Howard started work. Bill liked to have him around: he was gay and a heroin addict, so he fitted right in." (BMB546)
Brookner died of AIDS in 1989, just a few years before the introduction of combination therapy which would probably have saved his life. Gooch is currently married to Paul Raushenbush, a religious editor at the Huffington Post. They recently had a son.
In addition to Brookner and Burroughs, the book also includes mentions of Andy Warhol, Madonna and other high-profile New Yorkers of the '80s. Gooch notes in the prologue: "...I'd been writing by myself, for several months, trying to recall the past, as if it were a dream that I was recording, like a novel, with these characters Brad and Howard, and some other more famous characters like Andy or Bill or Madonna, names that felt italicized as I typed them out."
Gooch previously wrote the Frank O'Hara biography, City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara. (Warhol had, at one point, planned a film called Messy Lives featuring pieces by O'Hara and other poets, but no footage was ever shot.)
I'll do a short review of Gooch's new book once I've read it and will post it here.
A Day in the Life of Andy Warhol
11 April 2015: BBC Scotland is doing a documentary on a day in the life of Andy Warhol. Shooting in New York in late May/June. (I wonder what day they are doing - I hear that 6 October 1966 was a good day.)
Warhol by the Book
10 April 2015: "Warhol by the Book" at the Williams College Museum of Art closes in August 2015. Review by Blake Gopnik who is currently working on a biography of the artist here.
Andy Mouse
09 April 2015: In preparation for their upcoming Prints & Multiples sale, "and its leading lot, Keith Haring’s Andy Mouse," Christie's has posted an interesting page on Keith Haring and the Andy Mouse, with quotes from Warhol and Haring and some great images of the screenprints. They will be auctioning off the complete set of four screenprints from 1986, each signed and dated by Haring and Warhol. See here.
A fact a day
08 April 2015: Does this new format work in your browser? If not, email me: garycom.now@gmail.com. I'll be adding at least one Warhol-related news "fact" a day - taking as my inspiration what Warhol allegedly said to Henry Geldzahler: "Oh, you know so much. Teach me a fact a day and then I'll be as smart as you." (LD139)
Andy Warhol's Great-Niece does Pysanky (in Manchester, England)
07 April 2015: Julia Warhola's (alleged) great-niece does pysanky in Manchester, England. See: "Manchester woman continues old world egg decorating tradition of ‘pysanky.'"
Warhol N.Y. branch is cancelled
06 April 2015: The Warhol museum has recently announced that it will not be carrying forward the plans to establish a New York branch as part of a new development in Seward Park on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. The branch was planned to be 10,000 square feet.
Eric Shiner, the director of The Warhol, has issued a statement saying that "The Andy Warhol Museum, which had been exploring its participation in the Essex Crossing development in lower Manhattan, has determined that it will not proceed with the project. Despite the efforts of both the museum and the developers, an internal study of business and other operational considerations led the museum to this decision."