Bang Bang, You shot me down Pt. 2

Day 19:

The front page on the day Warhol was shot.

Fifteen Minutes...

Day 18-

The Andy Warhol Museum is located in Pittsburgh, PA.

It's on my Buried Life list to visit it.

Oh and the exact quote is:

"In the future everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes."

Bang Bang, You shot me down...

Day 17 of 28 Days of Warhol:

Well, we have appeared to have almost abandoned this Warhol extravaganza; however, I believe there is much more to say about Andy, which is why we shall continue this journey, despite tomorrow being March 1st. We will proceed, no matter how long it takes.

The photo to the left is of Andy's marred body after his attempted murder by actress Valarie Solanas. Andy almost died from the incident. He was pronounced "clinically dead" but the doctors managed to get his heart going again and 5 hours of intense surgery.

Solanas said she shot Warhol because he had too much control on her life. She also said "I just wanted him to pay attention to me. Talking to him was like talking to a chair." Talk about a motive.

Read the whole story here: Andy Warhol Almost Dies

You Can Call Me On The Telephone

Day 16 of 28 Days of Warhol

We're getting a little behind I see...

Warhol was not only obsessed with Polaroids. He was also very much into talking on the phone, which is why the gift to Jim Morrison of a telephone was so fitting.

Warhol loved to spend hours talking on the phone. He would record some of the conversations he had with friends on the phone. To Warhol the phone is, what the voice recorder was to Hunter S. Thompson. It was the crucial communication device that bound the genius to his work and the public. If Warhol did not love the telephone, he would have been quite the isolated man.

Connections

Day 15:

Here is a connection.

Back in the 60's, Andy Warhol at one point requested to meet Jim Morrison from the Doors. As history has it, Warhol gave Morrison a telephone as a present that night.

Polaroids Pt. 2

Day 14 of 28 Days of Warhol:

My 2010 interpretation of Andy's Polaroids. It would have been much more suiting if I used a polaroid camera

Screen Tests

Day 13: Andy's film Screen Tests set to music

Polaroids

Day 12 of 28 Days of Warhol- The polaroids

The Repetition Kills You..

Day 11:

This post relates to "What I have in common with Andy Warhol" and repetition:

"Marilyn Monroe was the embodiment of female glamour. Her wavy blond hair, open smile and full figure were stereotypical components of an American beauty ideal.

Pop artist Andy Warhol, who made works about postwar consumer culture, mass manufacture, and commercial reproduction, worked with an iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe that was familiar to virtually the entire nation. He printed multiple versions of this same image in a colorful grid.

This print comments not only on the star's iconic status as a glamorous figure but also on the role of the star as media commodity- as a product of the entertainment industry. Marilyn the icon can be infinitely reproduced for mass consumption, thanks to the technologies of photography and commercial printing. Warhol's work emphasizes one of the most important aspects of contemporary imaging technologies.

The multiple images of Monroe emphasize that cultural icons can and must be mass distributed in order for the star herself to have mass appeal."

(From Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.)

Warhol understood this art of reproduction. He understood that through repetition he could make a statement about commodities, icons and America itself. The image of Marilyn repeated over and over was like giving the entertainment industry a big middle finger, and Warhol knew it.

What I Have In Common With Andy Warhol

Day 10-This is part of an article that I wrote:

Commonalities between a "Superstar" and a small town girl can exist. I feel that I connect with Andy in many ways, more than the average Warholian fan. Andy Paperbag is "abstract" and seems "superficial" or rather an empty/void, but I find him relatable on many levels.

Andy did not like to be touched. He liked to be a voyeur, an external observer, and physical contact seemed obscene. Andy would have liked to touch, but he did not like to receive touch in return. This is how I feel. I do not like to be touched. I don't like to even be touched by my mother. When someone attempts to hug me, I kind of cringe and shrink away. The physical connections between people seem irrelevant. I like to connect with people visually and through the abstract way: words. When I go out dancing, I do not like to be touched by the other people dancing around me(which is difficult at a club). I like to dance in my own world, with my own frame of reference. This is how it is-you can look but you cant touch. And if you touch, it is because I have allowed this physical interaction to happen.

Andy felt like a prisoner in his own body. Much like the Portrait of Dorian Gray, Andy felt like the disfigured painting of something that once was beautiful.

Andy liked Repetition. Take the soup cans,coke bottles, the Marilyns, polaroids, etc.

Andy liked the trashy and obscene. He liked to showcase it, flaunt it. Decadence.

Andy was the director. He was the true artist. Coming up with the concepts and ideas, and getting others to act them out, paint them, make them into reality.

Andy liked celebrities and Fame. He had a fascination with their faces(silk screening them onto a canvas) and their lives. He took his friends and made them into mini celebrities, Making them famous on their own accord; making them into "Superstars".

Andy liked to take photographs. He liked how they portrayed "reality" or his version of staged "reality". He was always taking polaroids of friends and things around him.

Was Andy decadent? Did he live to excess. I think he had lived quite a simple life at home. The Factory/studio was his playground. Perhaps the people around him were extravagant and he was just a pawn, an illusion of decadence.

Was Andy a dandy in his own right? Did he live like Oscar Wilde as a peacock displaying his feathers. I don't think so. I think what appears to be decadent of Andy is actually the props he used to hide his insecurities (ex- his trademark silver wig).

These Days.

Day 9:

The Velvet Underground

The Factory's house band.

Fabulous Lou Reed.

In 1967, the album The Velvet Underground and Nico was released

with Andy's famous peel-off banana on the cover.

I'm not a fan off Nico.

She appeared cold and robot, kind like an animal with a void behind her eyes.

Although her solo track "These Days" is excellent.

Check out the songs:

"Stephanie Says", "Venus in Furs" and "White light/white heat"

The Silver Factory Pt. 2

The Silver Factory

Day 8:

The above photo is of Andy on the infamous couch

at the Silver Factory located at 231 East Forty-Seventh Street.

A brief blurb on how the factory came to be:

"In November of 1963, Andy Warhol moved his studio into what came to be know as the Silver Factory.

Located in a non descript midtown Manhattan neighbourhood in the east Forties, the new space was an enormous loft on the fifth floor: In early 1964, he met twenty-one year old Billy Linich, soon to be Billy Name- a fixture on the downtown art scene who lived in a silver apartment. Warhol asked him to do the same thing to his studio.

In POPism he wrote, 'It must be the amphetamine but it was the perfect tie to think silver. Silver was also the past-the Silver Screen...And maybe mor than anything else, silver was narcissim-mirrors were backed with silver.'

Linich worked for several months in early 1964 plastering the raw space with aluminum paint and tin foil, transforming it into the mythic Silver Factory."

The make shift shrine

Day 7:

My make shift Warhol shrine.

It's not yet complete.

Includes 4 Warhol works, 2 Grand Marnier ads

and 1 Lady Gaga photo.

Connections

Day 6:

Everyone's connected. You know, the six degrees of separation?

I'm six steps away from Warhol apparently. However, Madonna is only one away from Warhol.

In a recent Rolling Stone interview Madge explain the connection:

"At that time I was hanging around with a lot of graffiti artists, Futura 2000, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Jean-Michel introduced me to Andy Warhol. I remember we were all at a Japanese restaurant on Second Avenue and Seventh Street, where Keith had done a bunch of drawings on the wall, and Jean- Michel was telling me how jealous he was of me being on the radio. Because he thought that I had a more accessible form of art, and more people would be exposed to it. Andy told him to stop complaining."

"Keith and Andy did four pieces fro me as a wedding present when I married Sean (Penn). They're pictures of me from the cover of The New York Post when all the nude photographs of me came out in Playboy and Penthouse. The headline says 'I'm not ashamed'. So they took all the Post covers and painted over them. They're in my house in L.A. - a sign-post, a watershed moment..."

Day 5 of 28 Days of Warhol

Day 5:

So behind on these 28 Days of Warhol.

This is a photo of Edie, Andy, and Chuck Wein, in 1965 on the streets on New York.

These were the happy days...

Poor Little Rich Girl

Day 4:

This is a still shot of Edie Sedgwick from Andy's film "Poor Little Rich Girl" from 1965.

Yes again with the leopard print coat. There's more to come.

Button of Wonders

Day 3 of 28 Days of Warhol

This is the blazer and pin I wear with pride and joy.

I received this pin at an art gallery

and I like to flaunt it on a regular basis, like tomorrow.

You're the Boss, Applesauce

Day 2:

She is Mr. Warhol's most famous Superstar. She is Edie Sedgwick: a glamourous, old money, drug riddled, superstar.

Her demise was not pretty but her rise to fame sure was fabulous.

She roamed the streets of New York wearing a leopard print coat and also had a tryst with a certain Folk singer (Bob Dylan). Sedgwick is quite and intriguing muse.

Watch the movie Factory Girl or read "Girl on Fire" to find out more about her.

Day 1 of 28 Days of Warhol

Day 1:

To commemorate this epic month I ordered a book from Amazon.com called Andy Warhol: Giant Size. I saw it in the bookstore and almost exploded when I looked at the glossy pages, but I had to order it online instead.

It arrived at my mailing address via UPS 3 days ago. I was pumped and busted open the box. My family came over to check out my parcel, and they were not impressed. I believe my mom said "Andy Warhol is a freak" or something to that effect.

This is the same reaction that I received from my family when I took them to check out an Andy Warhol exhibit. My dad saw some penis sketches, and then told me he was going to wait outside on a bench.

Anyways, the front calls it a "comprehensive visual biography of one of art's greatest personalities" and says "extraordinary insight into his world of glamour, sex, and fame." Just from these statements, I know this is the book for me. It weighs 9 pounds on its own. It's such a beast, but I can't wait to look though it intensely. I may end up cutting out some of the pictures.