Nuff said. Get yours at The Nuns Are On The Sea Wall

 
(August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987)

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
When Andy Warhol Died
The Warhol Diet : A Bottle Of Dom Perignon And A Bowl Of Campbell’s Tomato Soup
A pair of interesting Andy Warhol-related items
Dennis Hopper’s screen test for Andy Warhol
Questions for John Waters (and on Andy Warhol’s TV)
Nico (Fashion) Icon
Andy Warhol Pinata Head
Andy Warhol at Fiorucci, Valentine’s Day 1986
Andy Warhol’s TV
Warhol Polaroids of Sports Legends
Andy Warhol: Gift-Giver, Braniff-Flyer
Factory Photographer Nat Finkelstein Dies
Warhol & Basquiat Interview
Long Lost Footage of Musical Play by John Phillips, Produced by Andy Warhol (1975)
The Velvet Undergound Live: Symphony in Sound
The Disappearing Warhol
 

 
Thnx William Meehan!

 
Dom Perignon commissioned the Design Laboratory at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art & Design to create an Andy Warhol-inspired champagne bottle. The result is rather predictable. But, what would one expect?

Six different styles of bottle art were created in Warhol’s favorite colors of blue, red, violet, emerald green, lilac and yellow. Dom Perignon are only making these bottles available in Spain. Which is fine by me. I’m waiting for the release of the limited edition Boone’s Farm R. Crumb tribute.
 

 
Two cool Andy Warhol items came to my attention today that I wanted to share here. First of all, the charming letter sent to the artist in 1964 by William MacFarland, the Product Marketing Manager of the Campbell Soup Company, congratulating him on the success of his then young career and offering to send over a couple of cases of tomato soup.

The video below is a 90 second condensation of the 23 minutes Warhol spent painting a BMW M1 race car. Roy Lichtenstein and Alexander Calder also painted “art cars” for the German auto giant.
 

 
Via Letters of Note/Jalopnik.

(MOMA on a moon chip: clockwise, from top left: Warhol, Rauschenberg, Novros, Chamberlain, Oldenburg and Myers)
 
The PBS series History Detectives kicks off next week, and its season premiere explores the possibility that in November of ‘69, the Apollo 12 lunar module carried with it a ceramic chip covered with original sketches by Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, David Novros, John Chamberlain, and Forrest Myers.

According to the series clip below, sculptor Myers (best know, perhaps, for SOHO’s Wall Piece) was the man behind the “moon museum” chip, and the clandestine effort to stash it somewhere within the module:

Going to the moon was the biggest thing in our generation.  It’s hard to explain that to the kids today…My idea was to get six great artists together and make a tiny little museum that would be on the moon.

Anywhere from 20 to 40 of the chips were fabricated, and, given the chip’s dimensions, the artists involved were forced to make a maximum statement in a minimum space.  Rauschenberg sketched a straight line, while Warhol cheekily offered up his “initials.”  But is is the chip really there?

Since no one can confirm it back on Earth, it’s going to take a future moon walker-slash-art aficionado to say for sure.

 
(via HyperAllergic)

 
Music by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips.

 
Author, filmmaker and bad taste-booster, John Waters, is out making the rounds promoting his new book, Role Models.  He’s also featured in this weekend’s NYT Magazine, “Questions For…” section.  Some snips:

There’s a chapter on Leslie Van Houten, one of the so-called Manson girls, who was convicted of murder in 1971, when she was 21, and who you argue should be released.
I do believe that.  Today she is the woman she would have become if she had never met Charles Manson.  Leslie is a good friend and someone who has taken full responsibility for the terrible crime she participated in.

What about the families of her victims, who don’t want her released?
They can never be wrong in their arguments, and I would never criticize their viewpoint.

Where is she being held?
The California Institution for Women, in Corona, Calif., an hour east of Los Angeles.  Every year I visit her on Oscar morning.  I go from her prison to Elton John’s dinner party.  I guess, oddly, that sort of sums up my life.

Is there anyone you would actually kill if you knew you could get away with it?
I find it repellent when people do yoga exercises at the gate in airports.  I want to kill them.

That’s reasonable.
There are little things that get on my nerves, like people who have reading material in their powder room.  When you go in someone’s house, and next to the toilet they have a huge basket of magazines, I find that repellent.  I recommend against straining while reading.

A much younger Waters also showed up in ‘81 on Andy Warhol’s TV.  Part I of it follows, with links to the other segments below:

 
John Waters on Andy Warhol’s TV Part II, III

Bonus: John Waters: Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship

Previously on Dangerous Minds: Andy Warhol’s TV

 
The career of Nico, née Christa Päffgen, and what happened to her after she crossed paths with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, has certainly been well-documented (see at the bottom, Nico: Icon).  Less well-documented, though, are Nico’s “model” years, starting out in Berlin when she was all of 14.  The accompanying photos are just a few selected from the fine—and generous—set found here.
 

 
Ranging in date from ‘52-‘67, these shots certainly capture a more innocent time in Nico’s life.  I particularly like the ones below where Nico looks like she just stepped into a Godard film.  It’s somewhat incredible to think that the face in the above black-and-whites would later go on to sing this, and this, and especially this!
 

 

Unleash your inner rage at art in the age of mechanical reproduction—bash Andy Warhol at the Brooklyn Museum!

Andy Warhol had a big head, so naturally, the Brooklyn Museum installed a 20-ft Warhol-head-shaped piñata. It’s filled with mysterious edibles that will rain down on art lovers when they smash it open at the Brooklyn Ball.

(Animal New York: Bash Andy Warhol)

(Via Copyranter)

(The Warhol Diaries)

 
When I was growing up, I could read the Village Voice in the local library and fancied myself “up” on what was going on in New York, at the age of 14, even though I had never been anywhere even close to the island of Manhattan. Having said that, if I wasn’t exactly an expert on New York City per se, I was at least an expert on each and every issue of the Village Voice. (And you can tell a lot about a city from its alt weekly, let’s just say. Reading between the lines = very easy with the Village Voice. True now, and true then.)
 
But in my hometown, one thing I couldn’t experience, even vicariously, was the insane cable access world of Manhattan Cable, now known as the Manhattan Neighborhood Network.I’d read about shows like Ugly George, where a fat asshole in a silver-lame jumpsuit carried a video-camera (the huge old fashioned kind with the outboard decks) around New York and asked women to take their clothes off for him. Many did. Many more told him to fuck off and die. There was also Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party, which I longed to see, it was so glamorous sounding, there was Al Goldstein’s racy Midnight Blue, but most intriguing of all for me, living in Wheeling, WV where nothing ever happened, were Andy Warhol’s cable access programs. I loved the idea that anyone who wanted to have their own TV show could do so and saw myself having one myself one day (and I did, The Infinity Factory talkshow, which was on for over 2 years opposite ER!)
 
A great website I just discovered called Zamboni has files of a few of the Warhol programs for streaming and download. Other shows are knocking around out there, too. Many famous faces here including Halston, Pee-wee Herman, Debbie Harry and John Waters.
 

 
Recall the pilfered Warhols of all the sports legends of a couple of months ago? The original Polaroids that Andy Warol shot that served as the basis for these portraits were on display at the Danzinger Projects gallery in New York recently. There’s a gallery of them here.

It’s says that Warhol always used a Polaroid Big Shot camera. I want one! Polaroid is stupid for not trying to keep their instant cameras going for artists. It they did an “Andy Warhol Edition” of the Big Shot, I would so be there…
 

 

 
A head-scratching controversy has been brewing in the art world of late over a 1964 self portrait of Andy Warhol. Or more accurately put, a series of ten self portraits of the artist that used to be by the artist, but now aren’t, so they’re not self-portraits anymore, they’re just portrait portraits not by Warhol anymore despite being signed by him. Got it?

Maybe I should explain a little bit better: Warhol’s iconic Red Self Portraits (as the suite is known) have been decreed fakes by The Warhol Foundation, the New York-based body that declares Warhols authentic or not. Clearly there are a lot of Warhol forgeries floating around in the art world and let’s face it, a Warhol would be rather hard for the layman to authenticate.

With Warhol there is also the the issue of “who” actually painted the work or who pulled the screens for the serigraphs. In the 1960s it was just as likely to be studio assistants Gerard Malanga or Billy Name as Warhol himself. In the 1970s, it would have likely been Ronnie Cutrone. Everyone knows that when Warhol produced work at his “Factory” it was with a mechanical process, done by others and only supervised by the artist, who for the most part, only touched his pieces to sign them. This is a fairly well-established fact! (Malanga has long held that he painted the electric chairs series and few would dispute this claim).

However, due to a set of criteria that I find difficult to fully understand (read more about it below) somehow, someway this rather well-known Warhol self portrait became persona non grata to the Warhol Foundation and the owners are fighting back at what they consider an arbitrary and unjustifiable call, rendering once incredibly valuable—and signed!—Warhols absolutely worthless.

From The New York Review of Books “What is an Andy Warhol?” by Richard Dorment:

[O]ne picture in the series, now owned by the London collector Anthony d’Offay, is signed and dated by Warhol, and dedicated in his own handwriting to his longtime business partner, the Zurich-based art dealer Bruno Bischofberger (“To Bruno B Andy Warhol 1969”). Since the Renaissance, a signature is the way artists such as Mantegna and Titian acknowledge the authenticity of their work.

As if this were not enough to authenticate the work, the Bischofberger self-portrait appeared in Rainer Crone’s 1970 catalogue raisonn?ɬ© of Warhol’s work and is reproduced in color on the jacket. Crone is a highly respected independent scholar who worked closely with Warhol over a two-year period to compile this catalogue raisonn?ɬ©. Anthony d’Offay, who was Warhol’s dealer in London, writes in his statement about the “Bruno B Self-Portrait”:

  When Andy Warhol came to London for his show with us in 1986, he signed in my presence our copy of Crone’s book in two places: one signature was across the dust-wrapper [cover] which reproduces our “Bruno B” Self Portrait eight times. The other was on the book’s half-title.

  It is important to realise that Crone and Warhol together chose the “Bruno B” Self Portrait for the cover of the book and Andy Warhol’s signature across the “Bruno B” image on the dust jacket is further unequivocal evidence that Warhol not only was authenticating the work, but remained extremely proud of it.

  On page 294, the catalog entry (no 169) for the “Bruno B” Self Portrait makes it clear that this is the picture that appears on the front cover of the book and was owned at the time by Bruno Bischofberger.

  It is unthinkable that Warhol would have signed the book and the image if there was the smallest doubt in his mind that the work was not authentic. The combination of the dedication on the back of the painting with the choice of that image for the cover of the catalog raisonn?ɬ©, together with his further endorsement of the image by signing across it leave no room whatsoever for any doubt as to the authenticity of the work and the artist’s intention.

In the letter denying that d’Offay’s picture is genuine (May 21, 2003), the board writes, “It is the opinion of the authentication board that said work is NOT the work of Andy Warhol, but that said work was signed, dedicated, and dated by him.”

We are now in the realms of farce?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùand there is more to come. In 2004, the Warhol Foundation copublished its own updated catalogue raisonn?ɬ© with Thomas Ammann AG, a firm of Zurich-based art dealers heavily involved in the sale of Warhol’s work. In it, the authors, all of whom who are paid either by the Warhol Foundation or by Thomas Ammann AG, silently omit all mention of the Bischofberger self-portrait, even in a footnote or an appendix. A picture that existed in 1970 has been made to vanish: so much for scholarly rigor.

This may be the first time in history that a signed, dated, and dedicated painting personally approved by an artist for the cover of his first major monograph, which included a catalogue raisonn?ɬ© of his works, has been removed from his oeuvre by those he did not personally appoint. Although Rainer Crone has worked closely with the artist and possesses an important archive of the work they did together, at no time was he consulted by the compilers of the 2004 catalogue raisonn?ɬ©. In a statement of August 14, 2009, Crone writes, “I am aware of no other instance in which a revised catalog raisonn?ɬ© omits a hitherto accepted work without explanation.”

When challenged to explain why it continues to deny the authenticity of works in this series, the board replied in a letter of October 2004 that it

 

knows of no independent verifiable documentation from the period in question, 1964 through to 1965, to indicate or suggest that Warhol sanctioned or authorized anyone to make the work.

But how is it possible to say this? Quite apart from his signature and dedication, there are on record numerous statements from Warhol employees, assistants, and his manager all supporting the evidence regarding Warhol’s intentions about the series.

In 2008 Anthony d’Offay sold his collection of contemporary art to Great Britain for ?Ǭ£28 million although the collection was valued—conservatively—at ?Ǭ£125 million. Prime Minister Gordon Brown called this transaction “the greatest gift this country has ever received from a private individual.”

Among the many works d’Offay included in the donation was the Red Self Portrait signed by Warhol and dedicated to “Bruno B.” Due to the controversy, Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota declined to spend public funds on the self-portrait and d’Offay was obliged to withdraw the painting, at least until the matter is resolved. Sir Nicholas has stated for the record that he feels the piece is indeed an authentic Warhol.

Another owner of a disputed Red Self Portrait is expat American Joe Simon, a film producer living in London. You can read about his dispute with the Warhol Foundation on his www.myandywarhol.eu website.

 
The Driver’s Seat AKA Identikit stars Elizabeth Taylor in one of her single most berserk performances and since no one can bring the crazy like La Liz, that is really saying something. This 1974 Italian film is based on a novella by Muriel Spark about a disturbed woman in a foreign country who seeks a man who will tie her up and stab her to death. There is ridiculous (mostly shouted, even screamed) dialogue like: “I sense a lack of absence” and “I feel homesick for my own loneliness.” ?¢‚Ǩ?ìYou look like Red Riding Hood?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s grandmother. Do you want to eat me?” She holds up her purse in an airport security check and exclaims ?¢‚Ǩ?ìThis may look like a purse but it is actually a bomb!?¢‚Ǩ¬ù The best line is this, however: “When I diet, I diet and when I orgasm, I orgasm! I don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t believe in mixing the two cultures!” The director, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, seems to have had no control over Taylor and it seems like she is making up her own Dada dialogue on the spot much of the time. Why isn’t this film better known?
 

 
Andy Warhol has a cameo in the film playing a British “your Lordship” who has a cryptic encounter with Liz in an airport and they meet again later in the film. His voice is overdubbed with an English voice, which is disconcerting but kind of interesting as you can see in the clip below.
 

 
Here is what the AllMovie Guide has to say about The Driver’s Seat:

A beautiful but mysterious woman goes on a journey that has dangerous consequences for her and those around her in this offbeat, arty drama from Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Patroni Griffi. Lise (Elizabeth Taylor) is a woman edging into middle age who is nearing the end of her emotional rope. Needing some time away from her job and responsibilities, Lise flies to Rome, and on the flight she meets Bill (Ian Bannen), an eccentric health food enthusiast who makes it clear he wishes to seduce her, and Pierre (Maxence Mailfort), a curious man who is wary of Lise and goes out of his way to avoid her. Lise informs anyone she speaks with that she’s come to Rome to meet her boyfriend, but it soon becomes clear she has no specific plans nor anyone to see. Lise whiles away the afternoon shopping with Mrs. Fiedke (Mona Washbourne), a chatty older woman from Nova Scotia, and in time crosses paths with Bill again, but it’s not until she meets up with Pierre that her real reason for coming to Italy, as well as the depth of her madness, becomes clear. As Lise wanders through Rome, a team of police detectives is seen investigating a crime that seems to involve her. Also released as Identikit and Psychotic, The Driver’s Seat features a brief appearance from Andy Warhol as a British nobleman.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to stunned silence and it has been suggested that Liz at one point tried to buy up the rights and all prints of the movie.

 
The Driver’s Seat is not out on DVD buy you can find a watchable VHS rip floating around the Internet without much effort. It’s also something that you can find in a 99 Cents Only store.

Previously on Dangerous Minds: ?¢‚Ǩ?ìBoom!?¢‚Ǩ¬ù High Camp Masterpiece Starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor

 
“I went there with a friend to do an interview, and suddenly we were the ones being interviewed by Ondine.”  So says Cathy Naso of her initial visit to Warhol‘s Factory as a high school senior.  Naso went there hoping to research an article for her French class, but wound up—as these things happen—leaving as a receptionist, where she worked for the next two years.  Her duties during that heady period included eating lots of yogurt, transcribing Warhol’s James Joyce-inspired a: A Novel, and hanging out with The Velvet Underground.

As a reward for her efforts, Warhol gifted Naso with a self-portrait (above), which hung on her wall briefly before she stashed it in a closet for safe-keeping.  Now, after 40-plus years, Naso’s selling it off through Sotheby’s, where experts think it can fetch an estimated $1-1.5 million (Umm…estimated value of hanging out at The Factory for 2 years?  Priceless!). 

Before Warhol gave his self-portrait to Naso, he signed it: “To Cathy ?¢‚Ñ¢¬• (2 years late).”

And speaking of closet-cleaning…included below is an amusing, rarely YouTubed commercial for the long-defunct Braniff airlines featuring Warhol and boxer Sonny Liston (ranked, by Boxer magazine, as the 15th greatest puncher of all time).

 
In the NYT: Thanks For The Memories, Andy Warhol

@ Sotheby’s: Lot 24, Warhol Self-Portrait

 
Tadanori Yokoo is one of the world’s foremost graphic designers, in the same league as Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast. He is also often compared to Andy Warhol and Peter Max.

 

 
In the sixties, Yokoo made some amazing animated pop psychedelic shorts, here’s Kachi Kachi Yama from 1965: