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September 30, 2015: A week-end of Warhol events at the Art Sanctuary in Louisville, Kentucky begins tomorrow, Thursday October 1st, with a reception for the opening of the Billy Name exhibition at the Sanctuary. The exhibition will run until November 7th.
On Saturday, October 3rd there will be a fundraising party (see poster above) which includes bands and a DJ, as well as screenings of The Chelsea Girls, Blow Job and The Nude Restaurant.
The films will also be shown the following day from 2 pm - 10 pm (with a break for dinner), accompanied by a panel discussion.
September 29, 2015: The Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei exhibition catalogue will be published by Yale University Press in February of next year. Contributors include Eric Shiner and Matt Wrbican of the Andy Warhol Museum.
September 28, 2015: An excellent interview of Billy Name by Sean O'Hagan has has appeared in the Guardian newspaper in the U.K.
From the interview:
Billy Name is lying in a bed in a ward of Mid-Hudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie, upstate New York, hooked up to a saline drip. He is not looking good: his face is pale, his skin sallow, his voice almost inaudibly low. It turns out that, as I was crossing the Atlantic the previous day, Billy was being admitted for extreme dehydration, a raft of recurring illnesses, including diabetes, having taken their toll on his 75-year-old body. Things did not bode well for our interview.
The following afternoon, though, I return to the hospital with Billy’s agent and close friend, Dagon James, to find him sitting by his bed, still pale, but happy to see us – and to talk...
September 27, 2015: The boyd | satellite gallery will be hosting an exhibition in homage to Taylor Mead, titled "Taylor Mead in Exile" from October 3 to November 3, 2015. In addition to work by Taylor, there will be contributions by Robert Heide, Paul Morrissey, The Estate of Fred W. McDarrah, Billy Name and others.
Taylor Mead in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes
Mead was an underground film star before he appeared in Warhol's films. The films he appeared in prior to Warhol (in the order in which they were filmed) were a full length b-movie directed by Raymond Phelan, Too Young, Too Immoral; two films by Ron Rice: The Flower Thief and Senseless; two films by Vernon Zimmerman: Lemon Hearts and To L.A... With Lust; two 8 mm shorts by Robert Chatterton: Passion in a Seaside Slum and The Hobo and the Circus; Hellalulah the Hills by Jonas Mekas' brother Adolfas; and another film by Ron Rice: Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man.
After Warhol he remained loyal to his underground roots, living in a squalid apartment in New York and performing regularly at The Bowery Poetry Club even though sometimes there would only be a few people in the audience. His last major role was in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, giving a sad and mesmerizing performance as a character who is at the end of their life.
More details on Taylor here.
September 26, 2015: Holly Woodlawn hopes to be home by her birthday, October 26th. Her home, however, was recently destroyed by fire. Alternative accommodation is being sought. She is currently still being treated for cancer.
September 25, 2015: Andy Warhol confidante Brigid Berlin (aka the woman who shot up Ingrid Superstar with meth in The Chelsea Girls) will be at The Strand Bookstore on October 30th. Brigid's mother was socialite Honey Berlin and father, Richard E. Berlin - the chairman of the Hearst Publishing Empire, She's been quoted as saying "My mother wanted me to be a slim respectable socialite... instead I became an overweight troublemaker."
Entry to the event will be the purchase of Brigid's new (unbelievably amazing) book of Polaroids that she took during her time with (and without) Warhol. This is a rare opportunity to see Brigid in person - she rarely makes personal appearances.
And if that isn't enough, also attending the event will be Gerard Malanga, Bob Colacello and Vincent Fremont.
If you are going to this, get there EARLY. It's going to be packed.
September 24, 2015: The musical comedy, Pop!, taking Warhol's attempted assassination by Valerie Solanas as its starting point, is going to be performed at Western Carolina University's Hoey Auditorium from October 1st to 3rd, 2015. A review of a previous production of the play, at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 2009, can be found here. It never quite reached Broadway. The play is mostly fantasy over fact. The setting is supposed to be the Silver Factory but Valerie didn't shoot Warhol at the Silver Factory. She shot him at his offices at 33 Square Union Square West which were painted white, not silver.
More about Valerie Solanas here:
September 23, 2015: "Warhol Unlimited," an exhibition of more than 200 works by the artist, opens on October 2, 2015 and runs until February 7, 2006 at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in conjunction with the showing of Warhol's Shadows in their entirety for the first time in Europe. The contents of the catalogue includes new essays as well as a selection of documents from the past:
With book and lyrics by Maggie-Kate Coleman and music by Anna K. Jacobs, “Pop!” takes the audience back to June 3, 1968, when pop artist and cultural icon Andy Warhol was shot in his Manhattan studio, a place known as the “Silver Factory.” The musical explores Warhol’s relationships with his posse of “Superstars” – historical figures such as socialite Edie Sedgwick and ultra-feminist Valerie Solanas.
Contents of the Warhol Unlimited exhibition catalogue
September 22, 2015: Happy Birthday to Genevieve Charbin (aka Charbin) today, who appeared in Andy Warhol's My Hustler.
Left: Paul America and Genevieve Charbin in My Hustler/Right: Genevieve Charbin in 2009
From "My Hustler:"
... Genevieve Charbin later went on to marry Bennett Cerf's son, Christopher on 8 July 1972. In an article in the Palm Beach Daily News (11 June 1972) giving details of the bride-to-be, she is described as the daughter of the president of an international silk and velvet firm. According to the article, she attended Wellesley and has a B.A. in physics and astronomy, having "graduated magna cum laude and elected to Phi Beta Kappa." In 1975 People magazine proclaimed Genevieve and Christopher "the trendiest couple in America." Christopher Cerf was a regular contributor to Sesame Street, which he also helped to create, winning two Grammy awards and three Emmy awards in the process.
September 22, 2015: Joe Dallesandro has visited his Trash co-star in a care facility on Sunday, September 20th, where she is recovering from treatment for cancer in Los Angeles. Joe has posted a photograph on his Facebook page of him and Holly from Trash, with Holly in bed and Joe on the floor, with the comment: "I sat on the floor yesterday., Holly was still in the bed. But the difference was during my visit, Holly and I talked about what a drag it is getting old. She ate some chocolate I brought her and loved the messages everyone sent." According to Joe, "she was really excited about going home next month."
September 22, 2015: Serendipity, Warhol's hangout in New York when he was a graphic designer (and where Billy Name worked as a waiter) is opening two outlets in Dubai - one at Dubai Festival City and another at CityWalk.
September 22, 2015: The "Washington Square News" is reporting that a Dylan's Candy Bar is opening at 33 Union Square West, which "once housed the studio of prominent artist Andy Warhol. The loft where Warhol produced his famous silk screen prints was decorated almost completely in silver, earning the nickname 'The Silver Factory.'"
This is, of course, incorrect. The silver Factory was in midtown, not downtown, at 231 East 47th Street. Andy Warhol moved his operation to 33 Union Square West in 1968 and it was painted white, not silver. And although Warhol did do paintings there, most of his iconic paintings were done much earlier. His original Soup Cans were done at home, before he had a studio.
September 21, 2015: A book of Howard Smith interviews that includes an interview with Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey is due to be published in November 2015. Smith wrote the "Scenes" column for the Village Voice and was a radio DJ for WPLJ F during the late '60s/early '70s. Other interviewees in The Smith Tapes: Lost Interviews with Rock Stars & Icons 1969-1972 include Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Dennis Hopper, Abbie Hoffmann, R. Buckminster Fuller and others.
September 20, 2015: Shirley Clarke's film, Portrait of Jason has been remade by Stephen Winter and will be shown at MoMA next month. Only a slight connection to Warhol here - according to a Guardian article about the new film, Warhol wanted the original Jason to appear in one of his films and the article also compares the original film to Warhol's Screen Test No. 2 - with Ronald Tavel replaced by Clarke.
It's difficult to see how a remake could work - given the realness of Jason's performance - he really was that camp and he really was that drunk by the end of the film - whereas presumably Jack Waters, who plays Jason in the new version, will just be acting. Clarke will be played by Sarah Schulman. It might be interesting, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The next thing someone will think of is re-making Paris is Burning with actors - let's hope not. (Actually I remember watching a D-minus film on Netflix a few years ago that came scarily close to a very bad remake of Paris is Burning - a fictional musical about a "child" who gets kicked out of his family's home and joins a "house." It was absolutely dreadful.)
The original Portrait of Jason can still be bought from Milestone Films and that version includes various outtakes from the film, including "The Confrontation." Clarke apparently made the film because she found out that Jason was having an affair with her lover, Carl Lee, and in the outtake Lee confronts Jason about the lies he has been spreading, calling him a "liar and a snake." That version is available from Milestone Films.
Lobby of The Broad in Los Angeles
September 19, 2015: The Broad in L.A. opens tomorrow, Sunday, September 20, 2015. Ignore the bitchy comments from the American press. It's a great collection. The L.A. Times criticises the collection as being "rich in blue-chip art, defined by market value decided through consistent years of sales and confirmed at auction." But who cares? It gives the viewer a chance to see some of these "blue-chip" works of art. Their Warhol collection includes some key paintings, including Blue Electric Chair (1967-8), a Ferus type Soup Can from 1962 and a Ferus type Elvis (1963), as well as Small Torn Campbell Soup Can (Pepper Pot) (1962), Twenty Jackies (1964), Two Marilyns (1962) and a Self-Portrait (1966). This is in addition to some classic silkscreen prints on paper such as The Kiss (Bela Lugosi), Race Riot and a Nation's Nightmare drawing. The building looks amazing and the collection is exhibited chronologically (as exhibitions should be) and not over-curated.
September 18, 2015: Barbara Rubin's film, Christmas on Earth, will be shown at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in conjunction with their Warhol Underground exhibition on November 5, 2015.
Popular t-shirt sold by Crooks & Castles
September 17, 2015: Crooks & Castles' employee, Bryan Calvero, has handed over two stolen Warhol prints to the Los Angeles Police. He had previously sold a third one through Bonhams. (See "Warhol prints replaced by fakes" below) Calvero claims that he bought the stolen works from a man involved in the construction industry. It's unknown as to what happened to the other 6 prints that were stolen and replaced with fakes at Moviola in L.A. Crooks & Castles is a groovy/hip-hop/skaters label sold through large retailers such as Selfridges and ASOS in the U.K.
September 16, 2015: Stevens Auction in Mississippi is planning on auctioning a second painting they claim is by Andy Warhol - this time of Marilyn Monroe. They previously sold a work they claimed as being by Warhol for over $200,000. Neither work appears in the catalogue raisonné. And neither work has a legitimate authentication or cat. rais. number. (The first painting can be found here.)
The painting that Stevens Auction is claiming is by Andy Warhol
There is no description of the painting on the auction house's website as to the type of paint used, the canvas it is painted on, the date of the painting, the provenance and exhibition history of the work etc... (If you want to see how a painting should be listed, check out Sotheby's.) Warhol did his paintings on a linen canvas. Is this painted on linen? The pose is different from Warhol's known Marilyns and the painting amateurish. The signature of Warhol is also wrong. He did not loop the front leg of his A; the "h" in his last name is more pronounced in an authentic signature (as are all the letters) and the slope of the signature differs from Warhol's signature.
The auction house has not cited an art authority claiming that the painting is a real Warhol. I have been researching Warhol for more than a decade and it is my opinion that the work is not by Andy Warhol. If you are thinking of bidding on this painting, please have a look at the Marilyns in the Warhol catalogue raisonné or at least images of authenticated Marilyns on the web.
[Note: The auctioneer has now noted on their website that the painting is "Not authenticated."]
September 15, 2015: The Warhol Film Ads site has added a second version of Gretchen Berg's interview with Andy Warhol that first appeared as "Andy Warhol: My True Story" in the November 1 - 15 issue of the East Village Other (which is also on the site.) The second version appeared in the May 1967 issue of Cahiers du Cinema in English. The chief archivist for The Andy Warhol Museum, Matt Wrbican, pointed out the differences between Berg's tape of the interview and what actually appeared in print in an article in the "Other Voices Other Rooms" exh. catalogue. The difference between the tape and the interview is even more apparent in the longer Cahiers du Cinema article. (Wrbican's and Berg's articles are planned for inclusion in a book of texts by and about Andy Warhol to be published in Spring 2016, On & By Andy Warhol (MIT/Whitechapel Press), edited by Gilda Williams.)
Joseph Freeman ("Little Joey") and Andy Warhol on front page of Nothing to Lose by Gretchen Berg (Warhol Film Ads)
Additions to the Warhol Film Ads site also include an article by Berg about her Factory days from Take One magazine and Henry Geldzahler's review of Sleep in Film Culture No. 32 in which Geldzahler again compares Sleep to Eric Satie's Vexations.
More on Vexations and Sleep here.
September 14, 2015: Ai Weiwei's solo exhibition opens at the Royal Academy in London this Saturday, September 19, 2015 and runs until December 13, 2015. The artist is expected to attend the exhibition. This will be the last major show of work by Ai Weiwei before the Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei exhibition opens at the National Gallery of Victoria on December 11, 2015.
For the Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei exhibition at the NGV, Ai Weiwei will be referencing works by Andy Warhol in new installations. Inspired by Warhol's Flowers, Ai Weiwei's Blossom will feature hundreds of porcelain flowers á la his earlier installation, Forever Bicycles. Warhol's Silver Clouds are the inspiration for new works incorporating inflatable balloons and wallpaper - Caonima Balloons and Bird Balloon.
After the NGV, the exhibition will travel to the Andy Warhol Museum in June 2016.
September 13, 2015: Have you ever used the vintage photo booth at The Andy Warhol Museum and left your photos behind? As part of The Warhol's "Exposures" series, Travis K. Schwab will be exhibiting a number of small portraits he made from photo strips that people left at the photo booth in addition to three large portraits of Warhol. The works will be exhibited in the Andy Warhol Museum shop window which has been converted into a gallery as a reference to Warhol's career as a window dresser and, in particular, his Bonwit Teller windows where he first exhibited his Pop paintings.
A Q&A with Schwab will take place at the museum on Saturday, September 19, 2015 at 2 pm.
September 12, 2015: "Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector" opens at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich today, September 12, 2015, and runs until January 24, 2016. The exhibition was previously at the Barbican in London from February 12, 2015 to May 25, 2015. Possessions of Andy Warhol are included in the show.
September 11, 2015: Footage of Andy Warhol's visit to Miami is included in a 75-minute reel of "Miami's Art on Historic Film and Video," which is being shown from today, September 11 to Sunday September 13 on a continuous loop at the Miami Center for Architecture and Design, as part of the Art Days 2015 festival. The film is described on the southflorida.com website as being "punctuated with footage of Andy Warhol, his reputation in decline, paying a visit to Miami Beach in 1983."
September 10, 2015: "Warhol's Women" opened yesterday at the Northcutt Steele Gallery at MSU Billings and continues until October 20. On October 13, Dr. Leanne Gilbertson will lecture on "Warhol's Stars: Fashion and Failures in the 1960s" in conjunction with the exhibition. Gilbertson was previously the Curatorial Assistant at the Andy Warhol Film Project and also wrote the article "Andy Warhol's Beauty #2: Demystifying and Reabstracting the Feminine Mystique Obliquely" that appeared in the Spring 2003 issue of the Art Journal. In 2008 she spoke on "The Persistent Present-ness of Warhol" at the Andy Eighty? conference organized by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh.
September 9, 2015: Artist and writer, John Perrault died on Sunday at the New York University-Langone Medical Center in Manhattan of complications following gastrointestinal surgery. Born in Manhattan on August 26, 1937 (but raised in New Jersey), he was 78 years old. Starting out as an artist Perrault later became famous for his writings on art in the Village Voice where he was made the chief art critic in 1966. He curated or co-curated a number of interesting exhibitions including "The Fashion Show Poetry Event" in 1969 which featured clothing designed by Andy Warhol. In 1971 he staged the performance-art piece, "Critical Mass," at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Perrault married the journalist and editor Jeff Weinstein in 2008, having been partners since the late 1970s. The wedding was covered by the New York Times here.
September 9, 2015 (revised September 10): Six signed prints from Warhol's series of "Ten Jews of the Twentieth Century" and three signed prints from Warhol's "Endangered Series" series were stolen from a Moviola film editing suite in California after being replaced by fakes. A Bald Eagle sold by Bonhams in October 2011 appears to be similar to the stolen work.
The "Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century" were originally published as a portfolio of prints but Warhol later decided to do them as paintings. The works stolen were prints. A complete portfolio of ten prints went for $200,000.00 at a Sotheby's auction in May 2015. The stolen prints were Louis Brandeis, Martin Buber, George Gershwin, Sarah Bernhardt, Gertrude Stein and Sigmund Freud. The "Endangered Series" prints were Siberian Tiger, Bald Eagle and Bighorn Ram.
September 8, 2015: "Becoming Jewish: Warhol's Liz and Marilyn" opens at the Jewish Museum in New York September 25, 2015 and runs until February 7, 2016. The exhibition focuses on Elizabeth Taylor's and Marilyn Monroe's conversion to Judaism in the 1950s and is divided into three parts. The "Celebrity" section features magazine covers and publicity material. The "Conversion" section includes an audio recording of Taylor's conversion and Monroe's musical menorah which plays the Israeli national anthem. The third section, "Myth & Legend," features Warhol's Mint Marilyn and Blue Liz.
September 7, 2015: All performances of Andy: A Popera are sold out. The "popera" is being presented by Opera Philadelphia and The Bearded Ladies. The audience is warned, "By attending the show, you are consenting to being filmed and photographed, which may be included as part of the evening's performance." Opera Philadelphia's General Director, David Devan, is quoted in The Daily Beast as saying "We’ve developed an iPhone app that helps the show work. Andy worked a lot with film so we want to have video imagery that is live and unedited in the moment and that meant we need to have the performers with multiple smart phones capturing images of the audience and then broadcasting them in real time on various surfaces onstage and so we had an app developed by our resident technologist Youngmoo Kim for it. There’s a lot of moving parts to this piece.”
September 6, 2015: Yesterday's Independent carries an article on the Tate Modern's upcoming exhibition - "The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop" that runs from September 17, 2015 to January 24, 2016. The exhibition blurb explains:
Tate Modern is ready to tell a global story of pop art, breaking new ground along the way, and revealing a different side to the artistic and cultural phenomenon.
From Latin America to Asia, and from Europe to the Middle East, this explosive exhibition connects the dots between art produced around the world during the 1960s and 1970s, showing how different cultures and countries responded to the movement.
Politics, the body, domestic revolution, consumption, public protest, and folk – all will be explored and laid bare in eye-popping Technicolor and across many media, from canvas to car bonnets and pinball machines.
The exhibition will reveal how pop was never just a celebration of western consumer culture, but was often a subversive international language of protest – a language that is more relevant today than ever.
Did they say "explosive" and "eye-popping?" Who writes these things? It's like the BBC hyping their latest documentary on Pop as "definitive." Using highfalutin adjectives in this way does not attract punters. Describing things with inflated adjectives (by the people who are putting on the show) instantly makes me think that whatever they are hyping is anything but "eye-popping" or "definitive." (I fell asleep twice during the BBC documentary and Alastair Sooke's meaningful glances at the camera were getting on my nerves when I was awake. He kept on looking at the camera as though he was making an "important point" but it was usually a point that had been made by others many times before and nothing particularly memorable. Did you see the documentary? Do you remember anything he said?)
The Tate's "explosive" exhibition was also mentioned in Sooke's "definitive" documentary on Pop. But why is the exhibition "explosive?" Because it redefines Pop by including second-rate work that was also produced at the time? Some of the art they plan on showing is more akin to Peter Max than to Andy Warhol. It's nice that so many women artists are included in the show as the Independent article points out, but you don't have to categorize them as "Pop" in order to praise them. Some were, some weren't. The exhibition may be an attempt to broaden the definition of Pop but how broad can you get until the term loses most of its meaning? It would be interesting to explore whether Pop was a time-limited historical movement like Abstract Expressionism - in which case the term would not usually be used to describe current art - but does the show actually explore that question? Or is it just an attempt to exploit the popularity of Pop by repackaging it so that a major exhibition on a popular art movement (i.e. one that tends to bring in ticket buyers) can be held with major corporate sponsorship? The EY in the title of the show stands for the global hedge fund accountants and advisory group, Ernest and Young. Last year the Wall Street Journal pronounced hedge funds as the "New Master of the Art Universe." I can't help but wonder if any of EY's hedge fund clients own works by artists in the show.
September 5, 2015: The Tate continues to expand its online archive by digitising its holdings of art and ephemera. Included amongst the digital goodies are the contents of the audio-cassette magazine, Audio Arts. The January 1, 1987 issue includes Andy Warhol and can be found here.
The Tate have also recently announced the establishment of "Anno Tate" - where readers can explore and help transcribe the sketchbooks of a number of artists, including Francis Bacon, Duncan Grant, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, and Graham Sutherland. Anno Tate is here.
September 4, 2015: Today (Friday) is Q & A day for Yoko Ono. If you tweet her with #yokoQandA, she will answer your question here.
September 4, 2015: The Andy Warhol Museum will be opening another Time Capsule box in front of an audience on November 13, 2015. Cataloguer Erin Byrne, Chief Archivist Matt Wrbican, and special guest Benjamin Liu will be on hand to comment on the contents.
September 4, 2015: The "Artist Rooms: Andy Warhol" exhibition that was due to open in Peterborough on October 16, 2015, has been cancelled. Structural changes were requested for the safe exhibition of the paintings and the venue was unable to make the changes in time for the opening.
September 3, 2015: The "Night of 1,000 Andys" will take place on Saturday October 17, 2015 at the Andy Warhol Museum. VIP tickets are $250, general tickets are $95 and members are $85.00.
September 2, 2015: The August 31, 2015 issue of The New Yorker magazine has an article about Jack Smith's archives. Who owns the archives has been the subject of controversy ever since Smith died. In fact it started before he died. It eventually resulted in a legal battle between Penny Arcade who had established The Plaster Foundation which laid claim to the archive and Smith's sister who argued that the archive belonged to the family.
The fight over the archive was brilliantly captured by C. Carr in an article in the March 10-16, 2004 issue of the Village Voice titled "Flaming Intrigue." In the article, Irving Rosenthal who was a friend of Smith and owns a considerable amount of "Smithiana" is quoted as saying "It was absolutely clear to me that the worst thing that could happen to the archives would be for them to end up in Penny's ownership." Arcade is quoted in the Voice article as saying that "Jack made me swear that if I did not destroy his work, which was his main wish, at least I would not let Irving get it." According to the Voice, "this eventually prompted Arcade to write a will that Smith never signed..." Smith's family did not have a lot to do with him during his career as an underground filmmaker, but the family argued that he rejected them rather than the other way round. His sister, Mary Sue Slater claimed that Smith "turned against me because I was normal... he hated normal people." On January 30, 2004, Surrogate Court Judge Eve Preminger ruled that Smith's archive belonged to Mary Sue who, by then, was 70 years old.
The New Yorker article picks up the story and tells us what happened to the archive after that. Gallerist Barbara Gladstone bought it. Gladstone is quoted as saying "When we had the closing, and I was sitting at a table with something like seven lawyers, I thought, Jack should see this. He wouldn't believe the formality of it." About 20 boxes of material from the archive have been sent to the Fales Library at N.Y.U. for their perusal and Gladstone is holding on to "the sellable work."
September 1, 2015: Salvatore Bovosco who appeared in the original production of Jackie Curtis' Glamour, Glory and Gold has died. Melba LaRose, who was in the same production, reports that he died of a heart attack in his sleep on August 25, 2015. Bovosco also co-directed a 16mm short starring Jackie called Kiss My Lips, Artchie.
An interview with Melba LaRose with a picture of Mr. Bovosco can be found here.
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