warholstars news
November - December 2015
Gaby Hoffmann on Viva and The Chelsea Hotel
December 6, 2015: An interview with Viva's daughter, the actress Gaby Hoffmann, has been published in The Telegraph newspaper in the U.K. Gaby, who won two Emmys for her role in Transparent, talks about her mother and living in the Chelsea Hotel - "I slept with girls, and I grew up around people who did whatever the hell they wanted..." Her father was soap actor Anthony Herrera from As The World Turns and The Young and Restless. His affair with Viva was brief and they were never married. He died in 1997 of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
About the Chelsea she says, "I actually think it was an amazing place to raise a kid, because it was a real community; it functioned like a cul-de-sac would in the suburbs. I had friends on every floor, people taught me to rollerskate down the corridors, and how to smoke pot.; the lobby was my playground. If you needed to borrow a cup of sugar, you knocked on your neighbour's door."
The full interview is here.
Billy Name in New Orleans
December 5, 2015: The Boyd | Satellite gallery has posted a short film of Billy Name on You Tube in conjunction with the exhibition of his photographs that takes place December 4 to December 30 at the gallery. There is no indication of when the footage was shot. It begins with Name showing Blake Boyd his "skeleton in the closet" (literally) and then an off-screen interviewer (presumably Boyd) talks to Billy about his connection to New Orleans where the gallery is located: "...you know I don't think anybody knows the history of you leaving the Factory and then going to Georgia and then going to New Orleans - and you had told me about the thing in the brothel and selling L.S.D..."
The video is on You Tube here.
Farrah Fawcett allegedly swapped for Warhol in drag
December 4, 2015: Courthouse News Service reports that Alejandra Rios is suing collector/dealer James Hedges for $24,000, accusing him of a "bait and switch scheme" in which she purchased one Warhol photograph from him (of Farrah Fawcett) but received an entirely different one (Warhol in drag). Details here.
Ronald Tavel book launch photos
December 1, 2015: Photos from last night's book launch for Ron Tavel and the tribute to Norman Glick are below. Details of Tavel's book, Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays, can be found on the website for Fast Books Press here.
Bibbe Hansen and Augusto Machado
(Photo: Victor P. Corona)
Ruby Lynn Reyner
(Photo: Victor P. Corona)
Tonight: Ronald Tavel book launch and Glick tribute
November 30, 2015: REMINDER: Tonight (Monday) is the book launch of Ronald Tavel's book about his experiences as Warhol's screenwriter - Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays - as well as a tribute to Tavel's brother-in-law Norman Glick. Author of The Bed, Robert Heide, will also be on hand to give a special talk about his relationships with Tavel, Warhol and the Caffe Cino.The evening is open to the public and will include film screenings in addition to live entertainment.
Starts tonight at 8 pm at the Theater for the New City at 155 First Ave. (at E. 19th St.). Info: (212) 254 1109.
Details of Tavel's book can be found on the website for Fast Books Press here.
Andy Warhol Portraits
November 29, 2015: The exhibition, "Andy Warhol: Portraits" opens at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento on March 13, 2016 and runs until June 19, 2016. Details here.
Andy Warhol: The Life Years 1949 - 1959
November 28, 2015: The exhibition, "Andy Warhol: The Life Years 1949 - 1959," continues at ETH Zurich until December 23, but then will reopen after the holidays on January 4 and close on January 17, 2016. (It opened earlier this month on November 4, 2015) A book edited by Paul Tanner has been published in conjunction with the show.
Details of the show here.
The book is available to purchase in Europe here. (According to the U of Chicago Press website, the book will be distributed by them in 2017 in the U.S. and Japan.)
Andy Warhol at A & D
November 27, 2015: An exhibition of photographs of Andy Warhol by William John Kennedy opened at the A & D Gallery in London on November 25 and continues until December 20. Details here.
Book launch for Ronald Tavel and tribute to Norman Glick
November 26, 2015: There will be a tribute to the director/actor Norman Glick on Monday, November 30, 2015, along with the book launch of Ronald Tavel's last book, Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays, at the Theater for the New City in New York. The evening will be hosted by Chris Kapp (director of the "Coffeehouse Chronicles" at La Mama) and will included video footage of Tavel's plays and a medley by Norman Marshall of songs from Tavel's Theater of the Ridiculous productions. The tribute and book launch will begin at 8:00 pm at the Theater for the New City at 155 First Avenue (at E. 10th Street). Info at: (212) 254-1109.
Glick was married to Harvey Tavel who appeared in a number of Warhol films (including Hedy, Horse and The Life of Juanita Castro). Harvey was the brother of Warhol's screenwriter Ronald Tavel. Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays is a personal account by Ron Tavel of what it was like working for Warhol. It also contains an essay by Tavel which clears up a lot of misconceptions about the Theatre of the Ridiculous, an index of names and titles (indispensable for researchers) and an introduction by Marc Siegel.
Marc Siegel was one of the curators of the "LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! - Five Flaming Days in a Rented World" festival that took place in Berlin October 28 - November 1, 2009. Tavel was returning from a planning session for the festival when he died on the plane taking him home to Thailand. After Tavel's death, Siegel was instrumental in getting Mario Montez to come out of retirement and appear at the festival in honour of Tavel. (Montez had always insisted on privacy because he didn't want his employer to know that he had been a transvestite superstar.) Montez starred in one of my favourite Warhol films, Screen Test No. 2, with a script (or "scenario") by Tavel who performed as the off-screen "tester." This is not to be confused with the shorter film portraits made by Warhol that later became known as the "Screen Tests" - a distinction that Tavel clears up in the book:
Ronald Tavel (Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays, Fast Books Press, 2015, p. 8-9):
The Warhol Living Portraits got off the ground almost as soon as Andy started filming... The subject was seated between the camera which squatted on a tripod and a blank, open projection screen. Andy would click on the camera and walk off. The portraits always were telling, in their way as much as or more so than ones on canvas. Mine was slated for inclusion in a feature called Fifty Fantasticks: as the title implies, a collection of fifty of these breathing portraits.
Gerard [Malanga] made double frame stills from a number of these rolls, with the preceding frame above the slightly cropped second, wrote a lyric to go with each, and published them in a huge and heavy softback called Screen Tests. As a result, film historians today call the 500 living portraits screen tests. They should not: they were far more final than that. "
Tavel gives a very personal impression of a hard-working Warhol that often differs from the impression given by other writers:
Ronald Tavel (Andy Warhol's Ridiculous Screenplays, Fast Books Press., 2015, p. 10-11):
"... my strongest image of Andy in 1964 is the one he settled for on Christmas Eve, because I spent that night alone with him at the Factory. He worked through the long hours, crouching over sets of his Marilyn and Jackie silkscreens, spraying each with different primary colors and commenting to me the while on his choice. Then he moved some large Elvis Presley black and white double-images to a better stacking spot elsewhere in the studio, washed up, and dried his hands. It was past midnight: he would be spending what remained of the hours till dawn with his aged mother, and taking her to services in the morning."
The chapters of the book have appeared on the net previously as introductions to Tavel's online plays in a different format but having them edited together in a book format provides a continuous narrative of Tavel's interactions with Warhol that is fascinating. The additional essay is also a welcome addition as is Siegel's introduction. The book is really a labour of love. Norman Glick requested it be published before Glick died and the end result is well worth the price of purchase.
It can be bought directly from Fast Books here or through Amazon.
Andy Warhol Barbie
November 25, 2015: According to Barbie Blogging site, http://papusilemele.com, Mattel plans on bringing out a new Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can Barbie in 2016 and there will be two versions - one that is platinum. The new doll is scheduled to be available from January 2nd. (It will be interesting to see how the price compares to the "so fierce" Moschino Barbie.) It won't be the first time that Mattel has done an Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Can Barbie - they brought out an alphabet soup can version in about 2000.
Andy Warhol's Since
November 24, 2015: Harvard Art Museums will be showing Andy Warhol's Since on December 6, 2015 as part of their "Films That Go Pop: Television Assassination—Politics and Protest"series. Details here.
Pop Art Design
November 23, 2015: "Pop Art Design" opens at the MCA on December 19, 2015 and runs until March 27, 2016. Details here.
Peter Blake and the origins of "Pop Art"
November 22, 2015: An interview with English Pop artist Peter Blake has appeared in the Daily Mail. In the interview he claims to have come up with the term "pop art" in 1958 in conversation with Lawrence Alloway. (Arthur Danto and other art writers credited Lawrence Alloway with the origination of the term in Alloway's essay "The Arts and the Mass Media." But the term "pop art" never actually appeared in Alloway's essay which is here.)
Blake also talks about his friendships with various art celebrities such as Tracy Emin (they've fallen out) and musical artists for whom he has designed album covers. The interview is here.
John Waters' Ten Favourite Books
November 21, 2015: John Waters has chosen his "Ten Favorite Books" for the New York Times Style magazine and they include the (brilliant) biography of filmmaker Andy Milligan - The Ghastly One - as well as Michael McClure's The Beard.
Andy Milligan directed a considerable amount of plays at the Caffe Cino and his book contains one of the best accounts of what the Cino was like - including, of course, the period when Warhol's crowd started going there. More on the Cino at: "Caffe Cino."
More on McClure's Beard at: "Andy Warhol, Michael McClure and The Beard."
The full list of Waters' favourites is here.
Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei in Vogue
November 20, 2015: Vogue Australia has published an article on the upcoming Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei exhibition here. They're also running a competition in which the winner gets two return flights to Australia, accommodation at the Sofitel in Melbourne and V.I.P. invites to the opening of the show.
Merce Cunningham
November 19, 2015: A major survey of Merce Cunningham's artistic collaborations will open at the Walker Art Center on February 11, 2017 and run until May 29, 2017. Included will be his collaborations with Andy Warhol, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Details here.
More on Merce Cunningham in the Mark Lancaster interview here.
Marcia Resnick and Paige Powell
November 18, 2015: There's an interview with Marcia Resnick in the Village Voice about her new book, Punks, Poets, and Provocateurs, New York City Bad Boys, 1977-1982 here and a slideshow of Paige Powell's show in Flavorwire here.
Interview with Brigid Berlin
November 17, 2015: An interview with Brigid Berlin has appeared in Interview magazine here.
Ludwig Goes Pop
November 16, 2015: The Ludwig Museum is currently hosting a major exhibition of Pop - Ludwig Goes Pop + The East Side Story - which continues until January 3, 2016. Artists include Andy Warhol, Roy LIchtenstein, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselmann, Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and others. Details here.
Dippy wins over Warhol
November 15, 2015: Dippy the Dinosaur has won over Warhol and Van Gogh in a vote by museum-goers voting on their "favorite artwork, artifact or experience" from the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh to celebrate its 120th anniversary. The finalists were Vincent Van Gogh's Wheat Fields After the Rain, at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Miniature Railroad & Village at the Carnegie Science Center and Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds at The Andy Warhol Museum.
Details in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette here.
Andy Warhol Museum launches scavenger hunt
November 14, 2015: The people who do the PR for the Andy Warhol Museum - Marc USA - have announced a "city-wide scavenger hunt" that leads to the new Warhol exhibition Warhol by the Book. The agency is hiding "more than 150 specially designed books" throughout Pittsburgh. The finder returns them to the museum, receives two free tickets for entry, and the books will eventually form a Warhol image. It's an interesting idea - but will these "books" become collector's items themselves - meaning that they won't be returned to the museum? It will be interesting to see how it pans out. The press release is here.
Warhol at the Ashmolean Museum
November 13, 2015: An exhibition of more than 100 works by Andy Warhol, including films, will be be exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum of Art at the University of Oxford from February 4 to May 15, 2016.
Party at Halston's
November 12, 2015: Monday night there was a party at Halston's old home at 101 E. 63rd Street in New York after a benefit for the Andy Warhol Museum at Le Cirque attended by (among others) Jane Holzer, Bob Colacello, Vincent and Shelly Fremont, Michael Chow, Peter Marino and Adam Lindeman (now the proud owner of the Montauk property previously owned by Warhol and Paul Morrissey). Guests travelled from Le Cirque to the party in a line of limos, 80s style. At one point during the party, guests participated in a sing-along, with the participation of Debbie Harry, Justin Bond and Patrick McMullan.
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