Andy Warhol Portraits

Book Description

First Book to Feature over 300 of Warhol's Famous Faces"I think everybody is my friend." -Andy Warhol To the general public, Andy Warhol is known as a painter of legendaryicons, from Marilyn and Jackie O to his own ever-changing self-portrait. Less known are the portraits he made of socialites, art dealers,collectors, politicians, fashion designers and a variety of contemporarycult figures, mostly commissioned work that helped finance Warhol's manyother artistic activities.Never before has there been a book thatprovides a comprehensive overview of all of Warhol's famous faces. ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS by Tony Shafrazi, is the first book to provide acomplete overview of Warhol's many celebrity portraits, from the famous tothe infamous.It features over 300 glamorous portraits including manyworks largely unknown even by avid fans.ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS grew out of an exhibition that was organized by theTony Shafrazi Gallery, New York in 2005.Shafrazi paid homage to a seminaldisplay of Warhol's portraits that took place at the Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art in 1979-80.The Whitney exhibition presented for the firsttime a large array of the commissioned portraits that the artist began inthe early 1970s as a way to offset the cost of multiplying activities atthe Factory.Shafrazi's exhibition included many portraits from theoriginal Whitney exhibition as well as others.ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS takesShafrazi's exhibition even further, nearly doubling the number of worksshown.On the 20th anniversary of Warhol's death in 1987, there has never been abetter time to reflect on Warhol's life and influence on pop culture today. According to a recent interview with Charlotte Abbot from PublishersWeekly, "It's a good moment for Andy Warhol.Culturally, he is still ontop."Art historians and critics have long neglected this body of Warhol's work,preferring to discuss and study the more iconic Marilyns or Campbell SoupCans of the 1960's.ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS includes, in addition to famousportraits of Marlon Brando, Liz Taylor and Dennis Hopper, lesser-knownimages of actors Bill Murray and Meryl Streep, fellow artists Donald Juddand Cy Twombly and royal family members such as Princess Diana and PrincessCaroline.It also features a number of musicians, including Prince andDolly Parton, and fashion icons including Diane von Furstenberg and GiorgioArmani. The book begins with an introduction by Tony Shafrazi, and features essaysby established art historians/critics Carter Ratcliff and Robert Rosenblum,who lend insight into one of the least fully known but neverthelessprolific aspects of Warhol's endlessly fascinating career.The book makesthe perfect gift for any pop culture fan.

Customer Reviews:

Face-to-Face Comparisons Reveal Warhol's Perspectives.......2007-05-08

When most people think of Andy Warhol, images of Campbell's soup cans and a vividly colored Chairman Mao come to mind. For those who know Warhol better, memories also include Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, most wanted posters, and self-portraits of the artist.

What few appreciate is that portraiture was the bread-and-butter that Warhol used to finance his experimental work at the Factory. Before this book, you could not see the full range of this work. Unframed and grouped with similar and complementary works in the same time period, these 300 portraits show a considerable range of style and expression that will be a new perspective for all but collectors of Warhol portraits. I found the work to be so impressive that it totally changed my sense of who Warhol was as an artist.

In this book, the portraits do the talking. The brief essays merely describe the processes that Warhol used and that he tried to make people look good . . . and larger than life. But you knew that already, didn't you?

The range of the ways he captured the spirit of his subjects is what's most impressive in this volume. Repetition of the same image in one work with different treatments could help us see many different expressions of the person (see Natalie 1962). In other places, many images of the same person in one work express mood, movement, and a story (see Sixteen Jackies 1964). In other cases, multiple images of the same subject give us deep insight into personality (see Ethel Scull 1963). In other cases, the multiple images show the reality as well as the personality (see Merce Cunningham 1963 and Triple Rauschenberg 1963).

Exploring different use of colors and backgrounds, Warhol could totally change our emotions as viewers (Silver Liz 1963 gives us a sense of coolness and elegance while Liz 1963 shows a woman of great emotion and passion).

In Warhol's process, subjects were photographed around 100 times using a Polaroid camera. The subject then picked the images (or image) that she or he liked best. The images were turned into silk screens. Then, Warhol added the background and color to capture what the mere shape could not. The degree of focus also creates more or less power and immediacy (compare Donald Judd 1967 and Robert Rauschenberg 1967).

The portraits also create dialogues, such as when married couples had their portraits done around the same time. In the book, these images are often on facing pages. You'll be arrested to see Nelson Rockefeller 1967 and Happy Rockefeller 1968 looking off into the same spot in space . . . but not each other. The color overlap is minimal, emphasizing their differences.

These images are even more arresting when the pair are portrayed looking away from one another as with Gianni Agnelli 1972 and Marella Agnelli 1972.
In places, painterly backgrounds add remarkable depth and power to the images as with the Agnellis.

In places, the painterly treatment is sufficient to remind one of the work of Degas such as Lee Radziwell, 1972.

Portrait creators have always arranged sitters carefully to emphasize a certain point. Warhol does this in a very minimal way, often adding more than part of a hand touching the face or a bit of clothing. Because of its slight use, the impact is much stronger.

How do the subjects fare? Those with strong personalities do best. Those with complex personalities are rendered beautifully, but aren't as accessible. Subjects who want to look physically attractive often appear merely decorative, like a background model at a party.

Warhol's talent can best be seen by comparing the various ways he renders eyes. Male and female subjects alike receive slashes of color that sometimes resemble eye shadow and other times seem like tiny masks.

There isn't much that's soulful about these works. They are more about promotion than about moral uplift. It's all the more surprising when that soulfulness appears as in Farah Dibah Pahlavai (Empress of Iran) 1977.

Seeing Judy Garland 1979 and Liza Minelli 1979 made me wish that Warhol had done more mother-daughter combinations. These two stunners crawl right inside you.

Part of Warhol's art comes in knowing something about the person. Where the subject is unknown, you'll find yourself a little more baffled about what the message is. Think of each of the celebrity portraits then as being in part a reflection of the public image and our current perceptions. Warhol uses this celebrity awareness to good purpose in creating very minimal works that express the dominant impression of a person (see Martha Graham 1980).

As his career continued, the works became more daring. I was particularly drawn to the line drawings with bold bands of color such as in Paul Delvaux 1981 and Jean Cocteau 1985.

Some of these portraits will cause you to stop and rethink what you know about the people. I had that reaction to the pairing of Prince Charles 1982 (coolly displayed as a young symbol of the monarchy) with the almost flirtatious Princess Diana 1982 (appearing as a powerful force with an earthy grounding).

The portrait of John Lennon is simply stunning (1985-86).

For a good sense of Warhol's progress, you'll enjoy seeing many of his self-portraits.

Enjoy a good look!

A less familiar Warhol.......2007-04-28

This book enables the reader to discover some rarely seen paintings by Warhol, representing many personalities from the sixties, seventies and eighties, from O.J. Simpson to Pelé, from the Queen of England to the Shah of Iran, artists, art dealers, art collectors, musicians (John Lennon...), actors, fashion designers and friends of the artist's. Even though it was this kind of work that drew the harshest criticism (Robert Hughes, critic for Time Magazine, dubbed Warhol the new Van Dongen, meaning by that that he only painted superficial portraits of the rich and famous of his time), they still show the scope and depth of Warhol's creative power. The book is lavishly illustrated and the text was written by leading Warhol authorities (dealer or critic). A very complete checklist of all the portraits illustrated is given at the end of the book. A valuable addition to the albeit extensive Warhol literature.

An influence that continues down to the present.......2007-04-10

Andy Warhol is one of the best known American artists of the 1960s and renowned for his uncoventional life and art as well as is enduring influence on American pop culture. An influence that continues down to the present time several decades after his death. Famous for his iconic images of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell Soup Cans, he also made art out of the facial images of political, social, entertainment, sports, and music celebrities of his day. This particular body of his work has been compiled and edited by Tony Shafrazi, who enhances this 320-page coffee table art book with 350 color illustrations and informative essays by art critic Carter Ratcliff and art historian Robert Rosenblum. The men and women whose images were made immortal by Warhol range from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Giorgio Armani, Truman Capote, Jimmy Carter, Joan Collins, Clint Eastwood, Herman Hesse, Alfred Hitcock, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Lenin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Liza Minnelli, Princess Diana, Yves Saint Laurent, O.J. Simpson, Elizabeth Taylor, Tennessee Williams, Natalie Wood, Mao Zedong, and hundreds of others. An important contribution to academic library 20th Century American Art History reference collections, "Andy Warhol Portraits" is a 'must' for the personal collections of Warhol's legions of admirers.

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol : (From A to B and Back Again)

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Ghostwritten by Bob Colacello and Pat Hackett
straight from the master
Andy Would Be Pleased
Loved this quirky read!
Of course it's brilliant, and it's b.s., which is why it's brilliant...

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol : (From A to B and Back Again)
Andy Warhol
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156717204

Book Description

The private Andy Warhol talks: about love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, success; about New York and America; and about himself--his childhood in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, good times and bad times in the Big Apple, the explosion of his career in the sixties, and life among celebrities.

Customer Reviews:

Ghostwritten by Bob Colacello and Pat Hackett.......2007-07-03

According to page 208 of the Warhol Biography 'Holy Terror; Andy Warhol Close Up' by Bob Colacello (1990), Warhol delegated the actual writing of the book to Colacello and Pat Hackett. Colacello wrote the first draft and Hackett wrote the version that was published. Warhol's contribution was to set up the deal, offer a few suggestions and one-liners, and read the finished pages before they were sent off to the publisher.

If a silkscreen created by Warhol's assistants (carefully aping his art style) but signed by Warhol is still "authentic," does that mean an autobiography written by Warhol's assistants (carefully aping his speaking style) but credited to Warhol on the cover is still an "authentic" autobiography?

Colacello's biography also reveals that some of the text in the book was borrowed from press clippings written about Warhol. Page 207: "It was Andy's idea to cull phrases from the Factory clippings scrapbook to describe what he saw in his mirror: 'The affectless gaze... the wasted pallor... the childlike, gum-chewing naivete... the slightly sinister aura... the long bony arms, so white they looked bleached...'"

Like nearly all of Warhol's art, his Philosophy was our idea of Warhol, rearranged and reflected back at us. When explaining why he covered the original Factory with silver, Warhol offered a list of reasons ending with "...most of all, silver represents narcissism. Silver is the color of a mirror."

straight from the master.......2007-04-07

I used to think that Andy Warhol was not a real artist, only a great self promoter. This book, written in his own words, proved my prejudice to be completely wrong and uncalled for. Much of what we encounter today in popular culture was forecasted in this book by Warhol. If only the best economists could even be 10 percent as right about their forecasts!

Andy Would Be Pleased.......2007-02-21

I had a great buying experience. The book was in mint condition and came within a reasonable time.

Loved this quirky read!.......2006-12-07

I was hanging out at a Borders one afternoon when i got hold of this book and I read all 200 something pages in a few intense hours! I'm sure the borders staff didnt appreciate me reading this gem for free but I honestly couldn't peel myself from it. What a character this Warhol guy was. Check this one out!!!

Of course it's brilliant, and it's b.s., which is why it's brilliant..........2006-09-19

Seriously, at a certain point when I was around 18 or 19, this was my Bible, or my Little Red Book - I and a handful of friends (Warhol died at about the same time) took every syllable here very, very seriously.

This is kinda funny to me now, but it's a great book still, a truly unique cultural artifact. Warhol - as always maintains the trademark deadpan aloofness here, which had a few odd purposes beyond simply looking cool: there were rare instances when he'd drop his guard and a hint of social relevance would enter the frame, which did run contrary to most of what Warhol did, here especially. Doing so would turn art into something didactic, and - as a joke doesn't work if you have to explain the punch line, art flops if you have to lead your viewers, or readers, by the hand into your meaning. Thus Warhol's stylish glibness and affected cool served a brilliant purpose - it made demands of everyone who came into contact with it.

Here we have Warhol's epigrams - spread out like some artboy approximation of 'Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung,' all about equally quotable, useless, devoid of literary merit, yet (unlike the leaden and ideologically bankrupt Chairman) also stylish and memorable, even at their most zoned out.

The other great method behind Warhol's facades is here as well - the same impulse that turned canned soup into the artworks of a once very, very poor 2nd-generation immigrant's child (if you were going hungry, Campell's soup would in fact become, and possibly remain, a beautiful thing, and we all know that beautiful things are and always will be one of the most fitting of subjects for art). These cryptic sayings and jottings all seem constructed to get us all to see the small stuff for what it is, and learn to appreciate it for that.

Warhol was like Elvis - all things to all people. And about as maddening, contradictory and semiotically intriguing as Elvis. This slim little book is one of his strangest and most magnificent achievements.

-David Alston

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Visions of superstars dance in my head

Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures
Callie Angel , Thomas Sokolowski , Wayne Koestenbaum , and Glenn Lowry
Manufacturer: KW Institute for Contemporary Art
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3980426548
Release Date: 2005-03-15

Book Description

Prolific, mercurial, thought-provoking, charming, engaging, dynamic, confusing--just like the artist himself, Andy Warhol's films explore the gamut of human emotion. From the time he obtained his first film camera in 1963, up until his death in 1987, Warhol explored and created moving images ranging from epic films, to personal portraits, to programs for cable television, to music videos. In fact, in a mere five years (1963-1968) he produced nearly 650 films including hundreds of silent screen tests--portrait films--and dozens of full-length movies, in styles ranging from minimalist avant-garde to commercial "sexploitation." His films and videos capture the rich and raw texture of the fertile cultural milieu in which he lived and worked, and are crucial to the understanding of Warhol's work in other media. Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures focuses on the artist's screen tests and non-narrative films from 1963-73. Within it we see sequences of his "most beautiful women"--screen tests featuring "Baby" Jane Holzer, Ivy Nicholson, Edie Sedgwick--and other works that showcase a parade of friends, actors, and models--Dennis Hopper, Gerhard Malanga, and Walter Burn to name just a few. This collection of tests is followed by the artist's non-narrative films including Eat, Sleep, Kiss, and Blow Job. All of the artist's film works are enhanced by texts from Mary Lea Bandy, Klaus Biesenbach, and others. The worlds of art, photography, film, criticism, lifestyle, and fashion unite in Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures, as 200 fascinating, full-bleed, remarkably clear, black and white stills provide access into territories both familiar and unexplored.

Customer Reviews:

Visions of superstars dance in my head.......2005-12-28

A few short essays. The same stills over and over.

But the essays are superb. Klaus Biesenbach sums the scene up, brings it to life, in just 4 pages.

The stills have become captivating in a month of viewing. Two hundred pages of them, effective black-and-white. How hard to stay still for 3 minutes. What's more erotic than Jane Holzer brushing her teeth?

The magic of Warhol is expertly conveyed. Here probably more than in the "Pop Box", the "Time Capsule 21", even the "365 Takes".

I haven't seen a Warhol film (or screen test) yet but this is the book that makes me want to. Do you have to be a Warhol fan already? Until you've seen something like this of the movies, you may not have actually been a Warhol fan. Hearing about the movies isn't enough. The silkscreens tend to be cold but there's lots of heat in these shots. In just these minimalist stills from minimallist movies, so much shows. It may be the closest I've come to experiencing Warhol.

100 Great Artists: A Visual Journey from Fra Angelico to Andy Warhol

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A personal selection of 100 masters

100 Great Artists: A Visual Journey from Fra Angelico to Andy Warhol
Charlotte Gerlings
Manufacturer: Gramercy
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Illustrated History of Art: From the Renaissance to the Present Day

ASIN: 0517227231
Release Date: 2006-02-07

Book Description

From Fra Angelico to Francisco Zurbaran, from the masters of the Renaissance to the abstract expressionists, this lavishly illustrated volume showcases the most influential Western artists from 800 years of art history, including:

• Michelangelo
• Salvador Dali
• Mary Cassatt
• Edgar Degas
• Pablo Picasso

Customer Reviews:

A personal selection of 100 masters .......2007-08-23

This album is a personal selection of one- hundred great artists from Fra Angelico to Warhol. The subtitle suggests that the artists will be presented in chrnological order but they are in fact presented alphabetically. One full page illustration of a painting is selected for each artist. There is short accompanying material about the artist and the work, with another small photo on the opposite page. The selection of the artists, I found a bit eccentric with there being a number of names who are not ordinarily considered part of the first- rank.
This is not an outstanding album but of course many of the illustrations are of great works, and can truly hold the attention and interest.

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Beyond outstanding
Very good
A beautifully illustrated volume of Warhol's work

Warhol
David Bourdon
Manufacturer: Harry N Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0810917610

Customer Reviews:

Beyond outstanding.......2005-09-12

If you only want one book about Warhol, this seems a great choice. If you want many books about Warhol, you may find after reading them all that this is the one you'll rely on.

If you plan on becoming a great artist, plan on developing a great friendship with someone like Bourdon.

I've read other very good books about Warhol, including Bockris' "Warhol: The Biography", "Prince of Pop", "POPism" and "365 Takes", but remained quite puzzled about Warhol. Bourdon doesn't remove all the mystery, but he does reduce it considerably.

Besides being an excellent writer and so knowledgable about art, he was a close friend of Warhol's for more than 25 years. He's packed the book both with details and astute assessments. There's a lot of the movies in here, both about their contents and about why they made an impact. Many prints and people are pictured. He's provided contexts within the worlds of painting, of moviemaking, and of the culture at large rather than just describe what Warhol did. Although a friend, he's not afraid to note Warhol's failings, including his stinginess in paying assistants and the coldness he could exhibit to former friends.
Warhol's sad (to me) descent into hanging out with celebrities after the 60's is also well-covered.

Why would people hang out at the dumpy Silver Factory? Perhaps for a chance to get into his movies, perhaps to be invited to a group dinner that night, perhaps because they were wanted no where else, perhaps to score. What really happened to Edie Sedgwick? A book focused on her might tell you, but Bourdon manages to tell enough that you can realize the full tragedy.

This is the closest I've gotten to what made Warhol and his associates tick. It won't stop me from reading more about Warhol, but Bourdon has helped me make a big step in my understanding of Warhol. It's an exceptional book and hence seems a great value.

Very good.......2004-01-28

This year at school, I had to write a research paper about an influential twentieth century American. I chose Andy Warhol. Needing a primary source, I went to the library and used this book. I chose it mainly because it was very big, and at the time I was worried I wouldn't have enough information. When I finally started reading, I discovered
a)there is a huge amount of pictures in this book (not a bad thing.)
b)this book had more than enough information.
It is a very good biography, good for warhol fans. The pictures are excellent, and offer a great career retrospective. The book is very informative, and my only complaint is that it didn't say enough negative things about the artist. However, I would recommend this book to anybody interested in Andy Warhol

A beautifully illustrated volume of Warhol's work.......2000-05-21

This is a lavishly illustrated large format book (11"x11") by one time Warhol associate David Bourdon. It tells the oft told story of how a sickly boy from a poor immigrant family became one of the most famous artists of the twentieth century, who's images of the famous and the mundane still influence art, design fashion and advertising today.

Even though the book is over 400 pages long with the author obviously interviewing many of the artist friends and family, Bourdon does not really document Warhol's life in any great detail. If that is what you are looking for, I suggest Victor Bockris excellent detailed biography "Warhol". Having said that, the author does cover all the main events of Warhol's life in a gossipy easy to read style (one which Warhol himself might have enjoyed).

The books main attraction is the amount of full page colour illustrations of the artists work. Probably around two thirds of the books 432 pages are given over to this, beginning with Warhol's first drawings at Pittsburgh Art College up to his last series The Last Supper.

Bourdon argues a convincing case for Warhol's importance as an artist and how more than several of the artist's concepts (I hesitate to call them theories) on the nature of celebrity and the business of art have entered the public conscience. I doubt we would have had Basquiat, Emin and Hirst without Warhol. The book shows how Warhol was and still is the perfect mirror for his age. From the Campbell soup tins, underground films, the drugs and sex filled Factory or the fame obsessed, celebrity portraits of the 70's.

Book Description

Comprised of essays offering "fresh and stimulating looks at Warhol" (Small Press Book Review), this collection stands out as a careful art-historical consideration of Warhol's work and its ideological and political implications for current art practices. Discussions in Contemporary Culture is an award-winning series copublished with the Dia Center for the Arts in New York City. These volumes offer rich and timely discourses on a broad range of cultural issues and critical theory. The collection covers topics from urban planning to popular culture and literature, and continually attracts a wide and dedicated readership.

Greetings from Andy: Christmas at Tiffany's

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Greetings from Andy: Christmas at Tiffany's
John Loring
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0810949628

Book Description

Before achieving fame and glory as a leading Pop artist, Andy Warhol was a successful commercial artist who contributed illustrations to women's magazines and designed windows and promotional materials for department stores. Among his clients was Tiffany & Co., for whom he created a series of designs for holiday greeting cards. The whimsical drawings and paintings he produced for Tiffany's Christmas cards are the subject of this charming gift book.

Exuberant cherubs and acrobats, a reindeer snacking on watermelon, a playful monkey dangling an ornament from its tail, a gold-embossed Nativity, a high-heeled red ankle boot stuffed with holly, and Santa's sleigh packed with presents are among the 50 black-and-white and color illustrations featured here. In his preface, John Loring, Tiffany's design director, recounts the artist's working relationship with the famed luxury retailer through entertaining anecdotes and quotes from those who knew Warhol. Andy's own bon mots about Christmas, sprinkled throughout the book, add to the appeal of this sweetly irreverent confection. AUTHOR BIO: John Loring, Tiffany's design director for the past 25 years, is the author of this season's Greetings from Andy: Christmas at Tiffany's and seven previous Abrams books, including Tiffany in Fashion, Tiffany Flora & Fauna, Louis Comfort Tiffany at Tiffany & Co. , and Tiffany's 20th Century. He lives in New York City.

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Eros And Mortality: The Late Male Nudes
Andy Warhol
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1931885567

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oh well......

Pop Out: Queer Warhol (Series Q)

Manufacturer: Duke University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0822317419

Book Description

Andy Warhol was queer in more ways than one. A fabulous queen, a fan of prurience and pornography, a great admirer of the male body, he was well known as such to the gay audiences who enjoyed his films, the police who censored them, the gallery owners who refused to show his male nudes, and the artists who shied from his swishiness, not to mention all the characters who populated the Factory. Yet even though Warhol became the star of postmodernism, avant-garde, and pop culture, this collection of essays is the first to explore, analyze, appreciate, and celebrate the role of Warhol’s queerness in the making and reception of his film and art. Ranging widely in approach and discipline, Pop Out demonstrates that to ignore Warhol’s queerness is to miss what is most valuable, interesting, sexy, and political about his life and work.
Written from the perspectives of art history, critical race theory, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, cinema studies, and social and literary theory, these essays consider Warhol in various contexts and within the history of the communities in which he figured. The homoerotic subjects, gay audiences, and queer contexts that fuel a certain fascination with Warhol are discussed, as well as Batman, Basquiat, and Valerie Solanas. Taken together, the essays in this collection depict Warhol’s career as a practical social reflection on a wide range of institutions and discourses, including those, from the art world to mass culture, that have almost succeeded in sanitizing his work and his image.
General readers with interests in Warhol, Pop art, and gay and lesbian issues will find this book appealing as will more academic audiences working in art history, queer theory, cultural studies, postmodernism, and popular culture.

Contributors. Jennifer Doyle, Jonathan Flatley, Marcie Frank, David E. James, Mandy Merck, Michael Moon, José Esteban Muñoz, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Brian Selsky, Sasha Torres, Simon Watney, Thomas Waugh

Customer Reviews:

oh well.............2003-01-05

I didn't think this book was particularly strong. It has writings from academics whom I totally admire. And I understand why people would study gayness as it relates to 1960s popular culture. Still, this book has very little about Warhol and his sexuality in it. A person is better off reading a biography of Warhol, especially those written by the people who knew him personally. This was quite an unimpressive anthology.

Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s

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Warhol and writers

Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s
Reva Wolf
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0226904938

Book Description

Andy Warhol is usually remembered as the artist who said that he wanted to be a machine, and that no one need ever look further than the surface when evaluating him or his art. Arguing against this carefully crafted pop image, Reva Wolf shows that Warhol was in fact deeply emotionally engaged with the people around him and that this was reflected in his art.

Wolf investigates the underground culture of poets, artists, and filmmakers who interacted with Warhol regularly. She claims that Warhol understood the literary imagination of his generation and that recognizing Warhol's literary activities is essential to understanding his art. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material, including interviews, personal and public archives, tape recordings, documentary photographs, and works of art, Wolf offers dramatic evidence that Warhol's interactions with writers functioned like an extended conversation and details how this process impacted his work. This highly original and fascinating study gives us fresh insight into Warhol's art as practice and reformulates the myth that surrounds this popular American artist.

Customer Reviews:

Warhol and writers.......2000-10-30

Warhol is often portrayed in films and literature as a superficial, aloof, overtly homosexual artist. What is often overlooked is that Warhol was an intellectual. Reva Wolf does a wonderful job pointing this key factor out to the reader. Warhol was associated with some of the world's greatest writers. People like Kerouac and Dylan came to Warhol for a reason; Warhol offered them a world that was worth writing about. Wolf delves into Warhol and his relations with various writers. The factory scene is covered in that great detail is given to Gerard Malanga (who was often viewed as Warhol's sole intellectual). Gerard was an aspiring poet (much like many at The Factory) and Warhol was often spotted at various "happenings" listening to the current spill of contemporary poetry in the sixties. There are relatively few flaws in comparison to the overall book. Wolf provides the reader with several rare photographs. The clarity of some of them is slightly weak. Yet, the layout of the book is modern and a few of the photos catch Warhol fairly intimately. The entire book provides the reader with an intellectual perspective to viewing the life of Andy Warhol. Wolf proves that Warhol was more than his facade by addressing the gossip and writings that surrounded Warhol. Wolf does not attempt to explain the enigma which is Warhol, but merely gives a new angle in which to view. Anyone interested in Warhol and the intelligencia of the sixties must read this book. Wolf's book is a fabulous companion to The Andy Warhol Diaries and Popism.

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