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by Gary Comenas
Paul Morrissey's funeral took place at Frank E. Campbell's in New York on Monday, November 4, 2024. Guests included George Abagnalo from Women in Revolt (co-writer of Bad), Geraldine Smith from Paul Morrissey's Flesh who also appeared with Maria Smith in Bad (dir. by Jed Johnson), Susan Blond (from Phoney, Fashion, and Bad), Vincent Fremont and Shelly Fremont (co-directors of Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story).
Speakers included Danny Fields and a friend of Paul who talked about one of the films that Paul made after he left the Factory - Forty Deuce starring Kevin Bacon as a gay hustler.
Music was the John Cale music from Heat.
The video of the funeral can be found here:
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/new-york-ny/paul-morrissey-12046541
The funeral of Paul Morrissey who directed Women in Revolt, Flesh, and Trash (among others) died on Monday, October 28, 2024. His funeral will be held at Frank E. Campbell's as above. Full details at:
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/new-york-ny/paul-morrissey-12046541
Obituary forthcoming...
Reva Wolf, the author of Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s (University of Chicago Press, 1997) and editor of Translating Warhol (Bloomsbury, 2024) will be participating in a panel discussion on interpreting artists' words at the Samuel Dorfsky Museum as per the following description. The panel is free to attend and includes refreshments.
The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art is thrilled to host the panel discussion Miscommunication, Interpretation, and Translating Artists’ Words, presented in conjunction with our exhibition Mis/Communication: Language and Power in Contemporary Art.
Panelists will consider how tone, word choice, censorship, power dynamics, book cover design, and more come into play when translating Andy Warhol’s words.
Join three SUNY New Paltz faculty, Reva Wolf (Art History), editor of the recently published Translating Warhol, Michelle Woods (English), author of Kafka Translated and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Academic book series Literatures, Cultures, Translation, and Mercedes Rooney (Languages, Literatures & Cultures), translator of the essay "Warhol in French," for an illuminating interdisciplinary conversation regarding what translation can reveal about historical biases, cultural transmission, and how we communicate with each other.
The panel discussion will include questions from students in Art History, English, and Languages, Literatures & Cultures, and will conclude with a book signing and refreshments.
Free and open to the public.
Front cover of Andy Warhol's mother - the woman behind the artist by Elaine Rusinko
Elaine Rusinko's book, Andy Warhol's mother, the woman behind the artist, will be published in November 2024. It's brilliant. I can't rate it high enough.
Studying Andy Warhol without researching his immigrant roots is only part of his story. This book fills in the gaps left by other Warhol biographies.
Andy Warhol is the only artist I know of whose mother lived with him (in New York) for more than a decade as he became increasingly famous. She was there from the Soup Cans until a year before her death.
Nobody else could have written this book - Elaine Rusinko speaks Rusyn fluently - the language that Warhol spoke with his family while growing up in Pittsburgh. She is able to translate what Warhol's mother actually said in his film that featured her (directed by Warhol which includes Warhol's boyfriend, Richard Rheem). Rusinko's book also explores what others have written about Warhol's past - revealing the truth behind the rumours. She spent years doing the research for this book.
If you are interested in Andy Warhol the artist and are bored with the sound bites and misquotes that have become his history; if you want to go beyond the social media image of the artist and delve into his background by enjoying this fascinating story of his mother - his roots - and how that affected his art and his life in New York, you will not be disappointed. The text is accompanied by a large selection of fascinating photographs - many of which are previously unseen.
Art Dealer of GREAT IMPORTANCE, Michael Findlay (originally from the U.K.), has written a brilliant book about his experiences on the New York art scene during the 1960s, including his dealings with Andy Warhol and Ray Johnson (and just about every other significant artist of that period.) DEFINITELY a book not to be missed. Published by Prestel. Details on the publisher's page.
Front cover of Translating Warhol by Reva Wolf (ed.)
Translating Warhol, a series of papers that were presented at a seminar last year organised by Reva Wolf, will be published by Bloomsbury in August and is available for pre-order at a sizable discount now from the Bloomsbury website.
The contents read like a "who's who" in the world of Warhol scholarship including Rusyn expert, Elaine Rusinko, who has previously written about Warhol's Ruthenian roots and is currently working on a book about his mother (anything by Rusinko is worth reading); Nina Schleif who wrote Andy Warhol Drag & Draw: The Unknown Fifties and edited Reading Andy Warhol; French art historian and critic, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn (author of Pissing Figures 1280-2014) whose insight into the way Warhol is translated (and sometimes mis-interpreted) by French writers is fascinating; Jean Wainwright on the BBC documentary Andy Warhol's America - and numerous other contributors - a complete list of the essays can be found on the Bloomsbury website.
Considering the amount of work that has gone into the book and the new information it contains (particularly in regard to the essays by Rusinko and Lebensztejn), it is well worth the price, especially with the pre-order discount. In the UK it can be ordered through Amazon. Highly recommended.
The exhibition Andy Warhol Velvet Rage and Beauty is running at the Neue NationalGalerie from June 9th to October 6th 1924 and will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue to be published in the U.K. in September.
Vincent Fremont, the former Vice President of Andy Warhol Enterprises Inc. (and co-director of Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story) will be one of the readers of High Priest, the new play about Andy Warhol superstar, Ondine, for the reading at La Mama in New York on 18 March 2024.
Volume 6 of the Andy Warhol catalogue raisonne will be published in July 2024. By executive editor Sally Ann-Nero and editor Neil Printz. Containing information on at least 740 paintings and sculptures. If you are writing on Andy Warhol's art, whether you are a journalist, an academic or a student, the catalogue raisonnes are indispensable for their accuracy and the historical detail they give about the works and about Andy Warhol's life. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Given the high quality of the volumes and the research that goes into them, the pre-publication price tag of $750 in the U.S or £500 in the U.K. for volume 6 - a two volume set - is a bargain. (Note that that price is only guaranteed on pre-sales.)
Happy New Year!
New cover of 2nd edition of Edie, A Mystery Solved by Gary Comenas (available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Blackwell's and Waterstones online)
Eric Emerson performing ballet as a youth on the cover of Who Killed Wonderboy?
At last, I've finished my exploration into the death of Warhol superstar Eric Emerson who once described himself as a "wonderboy" and starred in The Chelsea Girls, Lonesome Cowboys, San Diego Surf and Heat. The exact cause of death has been shrouded in mystery for some time. Was it a "hit and run" as reported by the press or was it, as a couple of his colleagues suggested, a "murder?"
Who Killed Wonderboy? and other stories is currently available on Amazon by clicking on the above links. (The Kindle edition will be discounted for two weeks to Amazon users.)
About a decade ago, a series of prints featuring a Warhol Self-Portrait with a red background were deemed to be not authentic by the Andy Warhol Authentication Board. A book featuring the controversy over the prints is due in November, written by Richard Dorment who was the art critic of a Conservative newspaper in England and also wrote for the New York Review of Books.
The reasons they were not deemed to be "Warhols" is clear from the reasons the Board (which no longer exists) gave to an owner of one of the prints at the time (quoted in What Andy Warhol Didn't Do.)
1. The series of Self-Portraits that Andy Warhol made in early 1964 consists of a group of works of the same size, produced from the same photographic source. Eleven works of this type have been documented by the editors of the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné thus far. Each work in this series is different from all the others as noted below. This is not the case with respect to the work you submitted to the Andy Warhol Authentication Board. To date, ten paintings have been examined by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board that are identical to each other and to the work you submitted. The existence of ten identical works is without precedent in the corpus of Warhol's paintings.
2. The background of the Self-Portraits that Andy Warhol made in early 1964 is painted by hand; and each background has been painted a different color. The background of the painting you submitted and the backgrounds of the nine identical examples are printed, not hand-painted.
3. The eyes, skin tones, and the silver hair in the Self-Portraits that Andy Warhol made in early 1964 are hand-painted; the color of the eyes varies from work to work. The eyes, skin tones, and hair in the work you submitted and in the nine identical examples are printed, not hand-painted.
4. The only aspect of the Self-Portraits that Warhol made in early 1964 that is printed is the black silkscreen impression, printed over the areas of hand-painted color. Each impression varies among the works made by Warhol, as does the registration of the black screen over the ares of hand-painted color. This is not the case with respect to the work you submitted and the nine identical examples.
5. Warhol's Self-Portraits of early 1964 were all made on linen. The work you submitted and the nine identical examples were made on cotton.
6. Warhol's Self-Portraits were produced from a photograph that he submitted to the silkscreen fabricator with his instructions on a paste-up mechanical. The photograph in the mechanical was reproduced by the silkscreen fabricator onto a photo-sensitive silkscreen. The silkscreen was used by Warhol to depict the outlines of the head and the features of the face The tones from the photograph seen on the canvas as a pattern of black dots are known as halftone. The density of the halftone in the work you submitted to our review and in the nine identical examples is reduced, as compared to the density of the halftones on Warhol's early 1964 canvases, indicating the work you submitted and the other nine identical works examined by the Board were not made from the same silkscreen that Warhol used to make this series of work in early 1964.
7. Finally, as part of its research, the Board learned that the work you submitted and all nine identical examples were printed by a commercial printer in 1965. The printer claimed that he received materials and specifications from another party, and had never had any contact with Warhol himself.
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