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February 2010
(to January 2010)
Arshile Gorky Retrospective at the Tate Modern in London
Arshile Gorky
(From: Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective
The Arshile Gorky Retrospective opens at the Tate Modern in London on 10 February 2010. Although the exhibition is not Warhol-related it is a rare opportunity to see a large body of work by an artist's artist who is sometimes seen as a link between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism although doesn't quite fit into either category. Despite the fact that Gorky grew up in a primitive environment, with no access to museums or art schools, he seemed to know how to draw instinctively without formal training - a "born" artist. When he did study at art schools after immigrating to the U.S. as a young adult he was elevated from a student to teacher in a relatively short period of time. One of his early students was Mark Rothko. Key works by Gorky include the figurative The Artist and His Mother, the surreal The Liver is the Cock's Comb and the fully abstract Waterfall. Matthew Spender, who is married to Gorky's daughter, has written a biography of the artist, From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky
Henry Geldzahler (Associate Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 1965):
"By his courage as a painter, Gorky helped to free his fellow painters. After his suicide in 1948 a touching tribute was paid him in the magazine Art News by his friend de Kooning: 'In a piece on Arshile Gorky's memorial show - and it was a very little piece indeed - it is mentioned that I was one of his influences. Now that is plain silly. When, about fifteen years ago, I waked into Arshile's studio for the first time, the atmosphere was so beautiful that I got a little dizzy and when I came to, I was bright enough to take the hint immediately. If the bookkeepers think it necessary continuously to make sure of where things and people come from, well then, I come from 36 Union Square [Gorky's studio]. It is incredible to me that other people live there now. I am glad that it is almost impossible to get away from his powerful influence. As long as I keep it with myself I'll be doing all right. Sweet Arshile, bless your dear heart." (AP182)
Exhibition details at: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/arshilegorky/default.shtm.
The website for the Arshile Gorky Foundation can be found at: http://arshilegorkyfoundation.org.
Arshile Gorky links from The AbEx Chronology:
Arshile Gorky survives the Armenian genocide
Arshile Gorky arrives in the U.S.
Arshile Gorky begins painting The Artist and His Mother
Arshile Gorky's Newark Airport murals
Arshile Gorky meets Matta
Arshile Gorky solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art
Waterfall
The Liver is the Cock's Comb
Arshile Gorky's first solo show at the Julien Levy gallery
Arshile Gorky's paintings are destroyed in a fire
Cancer and an abdominoperinal resection
Connecticut
Arshile Gorky's father dies
Arshile Gorky's final exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery
Car crash
Arshile Gorky roams the streets of New York
Suicide
Obituary
Candy Darling documentary to premiere at the Berlinale
From the trailer for Beautiful Darling at:
http://www.beautifuldarling.com/trailerbeautiful.html
The documentary on Andy Warhol's transsexual superstar Candy Darling, who died in 1974, will premiere at the Berlinale in Berlin on 12 February 2010, with further screenings on the 18th and 19th. Details at: http://www.berlinale.de/en/programm/berlinale_programm/datenblatt.php?film_id=20100299.
Beautiful Darling: The Life And Times Of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar is directed by James Rasin, produced by Jeremiah Newton and includes interviews with George Abagnalo (co-writer of Andy Warhol's Bad who also appeared with Candy in Women in Revolt), Penny Arcade, photographer Peter Beard, Sam Green, Pat Hackett, Helen Hanft, Robert Heide, Melba LaRose, Jr., Fran Lebowitz, Gerard Malanga, Taylor Mead, Paul Morrissey, Julie Newmar, Michael J. Pollard, John Waters, Holly Woodlawn and others.
The website for the film is at: http://www.beautifuldarling.com.
Happy Birthday Bibbe Hansen
Bibbe Hansen's birthday avatar
Warhol star Bibbe Hansen celebrated her recent birthday at a special surprise party at the Black & White Bar in downtown Manhattan on Sunday 31 January 2010. Guests included Danny Fields, Patrick McMullan, Jack Dishel from Only Son, Julian Woolsey from And the Revelers Fell, filmmaker Chris Dalrymple, Joseph Keckler, Fluxus artist Geoff Hendricks, Jeff Salzer, writer Jim Yoakum and his partner - the artist Ilene, Laurie Becker Oliver, jewelry designer Eileen Kasofsky, Susan Simmons, artist Ethan Shoshan, Jeff Rubenstein and Sur Rodney Sur. Happy Birthday Bibbe!
Andy Warhol Artist Room in Perth in April and the Tate Modern in the summer
Works by Andy Warhol will be exhibited at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Scotland from 17 April to 23 October 2010 and the Tate Modern from the summer 2010 to spring 2011as part of the Tate's Artist Rooms tour. Press release at: http://www.tate.org.uk/about/pressoffice/pressreleases/2009/20862.htm.
Merce Cunningham Dance Company to disband in 2011
Merce Cunningham, RainForest, 1968
Dennis O’Connor, Kristy Santimyer, David Kulick
Silver Clouds by Andy Warhol
(Photo: Michael O'Neill)
The Merce Cunningham Dance Company is to disband at the end of 2011 after their Legacy Tour which will feature his dance piece, RainForest, with Silver Clouds by Andy Warhol. Cunningham died in July and preferred that the company continued for only a limited time after his death. The final performance will take place in New York on New Year's Eve in 2011. After then Cunningham's works will continue to be performed when licensed to other companies.
Jasper Johns:
"When I approached Warhol to say that Merce would like him to design the decor for RainForest, Andy said, 'Oh, just take a lot of those pillows.' And I said, 'What about costumes?' and he said, 'Oh, they shouldn't wear any clothes.' And I said, 'I don't think that idea would work with Merce,' and he said, 'Oh.' But he didn't suggest any other idea. And when the subject of the costumes came up with Merce, he brought this garment that I think he had been wearing when he practiced and tying knots in it as it got torn, and he said, 'I think something like this might be all right.' So I imitated the thing he had brought me, cutting into the garments and tying knots." (JJ237)
Women in Pop Symposium at
the University of the Arts in Philadelphia
Image: Pauline Boty, "With Love to Jean Paul Belmondo" (1962), oil on canvas,
courtesy of Nadia Fakhoury, Paris and the Pauline Boty Estate
A symposium on women Pop artists will take place Friday, February 5 – Saturday, February 6, 2010 at Terra Hall, Connelly Auditorium (8th floor), 211 South Broad Street in Philadelphia in conjunction with the "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958-1968" exhibition at the Rosenwald-Wolf, Hamilton Hall & Borowsky Galleries. Details at: http://www.uarts.edu/newsevent/6387.html. Exhibition details at: http://www.uarts.edu/newsevent/6322.html.
The Origins of Andy Warhol's Soup Cans
or The Synthesis of Nothingness
Campbell Soup Company letterhead from the '60s
I have updated my essay on Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can paintings. The updated essay can be found at: http://warholstars.org/art/warhol/soup.html.
Third volume of the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné
to be published in June 2010
The third volume of the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné is now due to be published in June and can be pre-ordered from Amazon at a reduced price of $348.64 or $1,097.41 for all three volumes. Details on the Amazon page here.
Andy Warhol: The Last Decade travels to Fort Worth, Brooklyn and Baltimore
The "Andy Warhol: The Last Decade" exhibition will run at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth from 14 February to 16 May 2010 before traveling to the Brooklyn Museum during the summer (18 June - 12 September 2010) and finally the Baltimore Museum of Art from 17 October 2010 to 9 January 2011. It recently closed at the Milwaukee Art Museum where it ran from 23 September 2009 to 3 January 2010. Works include selections from Warhol's "piss (aka Oxidation) paintings;" his collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Self-Portraits and the Last Suppers which were first exhibited by Alexandre Iolas in Milan in January 1987 at a venue across the street from Leonardo's Last Supper.
Joseph D. Ketner II (curator of Andy Warhol: The Last Decade):
"Warhol in his last 10 years of his life was more productive than at any other phrase of his career... The Flowers prints, he cranked those puppies out. But the paintings weren't shown for many possible reasons. The Oxidation paintings, for example, which are the seminal pieces that note the change in Warhol at this point, were only shown very briefly in Paris. No American gallery wanted to show pictures that somebody had pissed all over. You know, that’s kind of gross, to put it crassly." (http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/32778/joseph-ketner-on-andy-warhols-last-decade/)
Lawrence Alloway and the origin of the term "Pop Art"
Lawrence Alloway with Bow tie painted by his wife Sylvia Sleigh
(http://www.myartspace.com/blog/archive/2007_11_01_blogmyartspace_archive.html)
For decades, art writers (including Arthur C. Danto in his recent book on Andy Warhol) have been crediting Lawrence Alloway with the origination of the term "Pop Art." As Danto wrote in Andy Warhol