DOCSLIB.ORG

The Rise of Pop

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Expos 20: The Rise of Pop Fall 2014 Barker 133, MW 10:00 & 11:00 Kevin Birmingham (birmingh@fas) Expos Office: 1 Bow Street #223 Office Hours: Mondays 12:15-2 The idea that there is a hierarchy of art forms – that some styles, genres and media are superior to others – extends at least as far back as Aristotle. Aesthetic categories have always been difficult to maintain, but they have been particularly fluid during the past fifty years in the United States. What does it mean to undercut the prestige of high art with popular culture? What happens to art and society when the boundaries separating high and low art are gone – when Proust and Porky Pig rub shoulders and the museum resembles the supermarket? This course examines fiction, painting and film during a roughly ten-year period (1964-1975) in which reigning cultural hierarchies disintegrated and older terms like “high culture” and “mass culture” began to lose their meaning. In the first unit, we will approach the death of the high art novel in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, which disrupts notions of literature through a superficial suburban American landscape and through the form of the novel itself. The second unit turns to Andy Warhol and Pop Art, which critics consider either an American avant-garde movement undermining high art or an unabashed celebration of vacuous consumer culture. In the third unit, we will turn our attention to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the rise of cult films in the 1970s. Throughout the semester, we will engage art criticism, philosophy and sociology to help us make sense of important concepts that bear upon the status of art in modern society: tradition, craftsmanship, community, allusion, protest, authority and aura. Readings (Available at the Harvard Coop): Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49. Harper Perennial. Andy Warhol and Pat Hackettt, POPism: The Warhol Sixties. Harcourt, Inc. Shorter Readings will be handed out in class throughout the semester. Copies of The Rocky Horror Picture Show are on reserve at Lamont. We will also have a screening of Rocky Horror (attendance required), time and location TBA. Papers Over the course of the semester you will draft and revise three essays. Each unit will focus on developing a particular writing skill. In the first unit, you will learn the mechanics of close reading and how to use evidence in a paper. In the second unit, you will enter into a critical debate and learn how to use secondary sources in order to craft a sharp thesis statement. In the third unit, you will focus on applying theories to texts while building on the skills of the previous two units. Participation Attendance and participation are crucial. Please finish all reading and assignments on time so that you are prepared for class and ready to contribute to our scintillating discussion of schlock. We will begin roughly 8 minutes after the hour (welcome to Harvard!), so please be on time. If you cannot make it to class, please send me an email. Two unexcused absences will be detrimental to your participation grade, and Expos policy requires that we notify your dean. NOTE: This is a class about Pop, but the readings for this course are not easy. If you are uncomfortable with challenging readings, you should sign up for other courses. An unannounced reading quiz may be given at my discretion. Conferences I will meet with each of you individually for 20 minutes after you submit each essay draft. We will discuss the status of your work and what revisions will improve your paper before the final version is due. Conferences will take place over three days, and your revised essay will be due six days after your conference. Please arrive for your conference on time. Another student is following your time slot immediately, so lateness will only result in less sage advice from Your Faithful Preceptor. Workshops Some of the work you produce for this course will be read by the rest of the members in the seminar. Don’t panic! We’re all in the same boat, and the purpose of these workshops is for you to have constructive advice from your peers and for you to see how other students write and solve composition problems. Grading Only the final version of each essay will be graded. But timely submission of drafts and reading responses will be a part of your class participation grade. Grade Distribution: Essay 1: (4-5 pages): 20% Essay 2: (6-7 pages): 25% Essay 3: (8-9 pages): 35% Class Participation: 20% Pop Policies No laptops Forget google. Forget the Interwebs. Bring Notebooks. Submitting Work Submit all work (reading responses, essay drafts and essay revisions) on our course website dropbox. You will find the website on the “courses” tab when you log onto my.harvard.edu. • Late work: Late submissions will received a deduction of one grade of each day. Note: a failed upload or email transmission is not an acceptable excuse. • Extensions: One extension during the semester on either an assignment, draft or revision is possible, though not guaranteed. Late work will also be accepted with a letter from the Freshman Dean’s Office or UHS. • Paper formatting: Use a standard 12-point font (Times New Roman, Garamond, Book Antiqua), double-spaced, one-inch margins. Number pages and paragraphs. Get Enough Sleep Seriously. Important Due Dates Essay 1 Draft: Sept. 26 Essay 1 Revision: Oct. 5-7 (six days after your conference) Essay 2 Draft: Oct. 24 Essay 2 Revision: Nov. 2-4 Essay 3 Draft: Nov. 21 Essay 3 Revision: Dec. 9 Harvard College Writing Program Policy on Attendance Because Expos has a shorter semester and fewer class hours than other courses, and because instruction in Expos proceeds by sequential writing activities, your consistent attendance is essential. If you are absent without medical excuse more than twice, you are eligible to be officially excluded from the course and given a failing grade. On the occasion of your second unexcused absence, you will receive a letter warning you of your situation. This letter will also be sent to your Resident Dean, so the College can give you whatever supervision and support you need to complete the course. Apart from religious holidays, only medical absences can be excused. In the case of a medical problem, you should contact your preceptor before the class to explain, but in any event within 24 hours: otherwise you will be required to provide a note from UHS or another medical official, or your Resident Dean. Absences because of special events such as athletic meets, debates, conferences, and concerts are not excusable absences. If such an event is very important to you, you may decide to take one of your two allowable unexcused absences; but again, you are expected to contact your preceptor beforehand if you will miss a class, or at least within 24 hours. If you wish to attend an event that will put you over the two-absence limit, you should contact your Resident Dean and you must directly petition the Expository Writing Senior Preceptor, who will grant such petitions only in extraordinary circumstances and only when your work in the class has been exemplary. Harvard College Writing Program Policy on Completion of Work Because your Expos course is a planned sequence of writing, you must write all of the assigned essays to pass the course, and you must write them within the schedule of the course—not in the last few days of the semester after you have fallen behind. You will receive a letter reminding you of these requirements, therefore, if you fail to submit at least a substantial draft of an essay by the final due date in that essay unit. The letter will also specify the new date by which you must submit the late work, and be copied to your Resident Dean. If you fail to submit at least a substantial draft of the essay by this new date, and you have not documented a medical problem, you are eligible to be officially excluded from the course and given a failing grade. You will submit at least some of your work electronically this semester. As you send or upload each document, it is your responsibility to ensure that you have saved the document as a Word file (or in a form compatible with Word). It is also your responsibility to ensure that the file you send is not corrupted or damaged. If I cannot open or read the file you have sent, the essay will be subject to a late penalty. Policy on Academic Integrity In this Expository Writing course, we’ll study many features of academic argument that will help you to understand how scholars use sources and distinguish their own ideas from those of other scholars. You’ll learn to accurately quote, paraphrase and cite source, to assess their validity and usefulness to your own thinking, to use some kinds of sources as evidence that you’ll analyze and argue about, and other kinds of sources as a theoretical foundation or counterargument to extend or deepen your own ideas about a subject. You will learn why it is crucial to the academic enterprise that we all clearly distinguish our own work from that of our sources, and you will learn at least one of the citation methods by which scholars acknowledge their sources. Please also pay particular attention to the following statement from the Harvard College Policy on Academic Dishonesty (excerpted from the Student Handbook): “All homework assignments, projects, lab reports, papers and examinations submitted to a course are expected to be the student's own work.
Recommended publications
  • University of Illinois

    University of Illinois

    UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS A/? /'A 19...... THIS IS TO CERTIEY THAT THE THESIS PREPARED t'NDEK MY SUPERVISION BY A ENTITLED................ IS APPROVED BY ME AS EULFII.UNC THIS PART f)F THE REUUREMENTS FOR THE DECREE OB. u ... 1 i . Instructor in Change A pprove^: ‘ ...‘ HEAD op DEPARTMENT OP. Andy Warhol as a Neutral Facade By Rachael E , Russ Thesis for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences College of Liberal Arts and Sciences University of Illinois Urbana, I11inois 1990 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Self Image 4 Consumerism 1 4 Religio. and Death I 8 Conclusion 2 4 Introduction "There*s nothing really to understand about my work.**1 2 taken literally this statement of Andy Warhol*s might cause one simply to dismiss his silk-screened images as the mechanical designs of a commercial artist, but it more accurately conveys his perceptions of self and the shallow world around him. As a leader of the revolutionary Pop Art movement, Warhol* s synthesis of popular culture and high art serves as vehicle for his philosophically more subtle, yet pessimistic attitude. In his philosophy he states, "Everything is nothing,"* which reflects his inherent insecurity with himself as manifested in his superficial existence. Warhol approaches his art and life on the surface in order to insulate himself from a more threatening reality. By experiencing life on a superficial level, he protects himself from pain or disappointment. When everything is nothing, he has nothing to lose. In his Philosophy, he illustrates his basic mistrust when describes a nightmare he had in which the people's faces are disfigured so that they 1 * Gretehen Berg.
  • Moma Andy Warhol Motion Pictures

    Moma Andy Warhol Motion Pictures

    MoMA PRESENTS ANDY WARHOL’S INFLUENTIAL EARLY FILM-BASED WORKS ON A LARGE SCALE IN BOTH A GALLERY AND A CINEMATIC SETTING Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures December 19, 2010–March 21, 2011 The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Gallery, sixth floor Press Preview: Tuesday, December 14, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Remarks at 11:00 a.m. Click here or call (212) 708-9431 to RSVP NEW YORK, December 8, 2010—Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures, on view at MoMA from December 19, 2010, to March 21, 2011, focuses on the artist's cinematic portraits and non- narrative, silent, and black-and-white films from the mid-1960s. Warhol’s Screen Tests reveal his lifelong fascination with the cult of celebrity, comprising a visual almanac of the 1960s downtown avant-garde scene. Included in the exhibition are such Warhol ―Superstars‖ as Edie Sedgwick, Nico, and Baby Jane Holzer; poet Allen Ginsberg; musician Lou Reed; actor Dennis Hopper; author Susan Sontag; and collector Ethel Scull, among others. Other early films included in the exhibition are Sleep (1963), Eat (1963), Blow Job (1963), and Kiss (1963–64). Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art, and Director, MoMA PS1. This exhibition is organized in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Twelve Screen Tests in this exhibition are projected on the gallery walls at large scale and within frames, some measuring seven feet high and nearly nine feet wide. An excerpt of Sleep is shown as a large-scale projection at the entrance to the exhibition, with Eat and Blow Job shown on either side of that projection; Kiss is shown at the rear of the gallery in a 50-seat movie theater created for the exhibition; and Sleep and Empire (1964), in their full durations, will be shown in this theater at specially announced times.
  • I – Introduction

    I – Introduction

    QUEERING PERFORMATIVITY: THROUGH THE WORKS OF ANDY WARHOL AND PERFORMANCE ART by Claudia Martins Submitted to Central European University Department of Gender Studies In partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Arts in Gender Studies CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2008 I never fall apart, because I never fall together. Andy Warhol The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back again CEU eTD Collection CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS..........................................................................................................iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................................................................................v ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................vi CHAPTER 1 - Introduction .............................................................................................7 CHAPTER 2 - Bringing the body into focus...................................................................13 CHAPTER 3 - XXI century: Era of (dis)embodiment......................................................17 Disembodiment in Virtual Spaces ..........................................................18 Embodiment Through Body Modification................................................19 CHAPTER 4 - Subculture: Resisting Ajustment ............................................................22 CHAPTER 5 - Sexually Deviant Bodies........................................................................24 CHAPTER 6 - Performing gender.................................................................................29
  • Warhol, Andy (As Filmmaker) (1928-1987) Andy Warhol

    Warhol, Andy (As Filmmaker) (1928-1987) Andy Warhol

    Warhol, Andy (as filmmaker) (1928-1987) Andy Warhol. by David Ehrenstein Image appears under the Creative Commons Encyclopedia Copyright © 2015, glbtq, Inc. Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Entry Copyright © 2002, glbtq, Inc. Courtesy Jack Mitchell. Reprinted from http://www.glbtq.com As a painter Andy Warhol (the name he assumed after moving to New York as a young man) has been compared to everyone from Salvador Dalí to Norman Rockwell. But when it comes to his role as a filmmaker he is generally remembered either for a single film--Sleep (1963)--or for works that he did not actually direct. Born into a blue-collar family in Forest City, Pennsylvania on August 6, 1928, Andrew Warhola, Jr. attended art school at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He moved to New York in 1949, where he changed his name to Andy Warhol and became an international icon of Pop Art. Between 1963 and 1967 Warhol turned out a dizzying number and variety of films involving many different collaborators, but after a 1968 attempt on his life, he retired from active duty behind the camera, becoming a producer/ "presenter" of films, almost all of which were written and directed by Paul Morrissey. Morrissey's Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), and Heat (1972) are estimable works. And Bad (1977), the sole opus of Warhol's lover Jed Johnson, is not bad either. But none of these films can compare to the Warhol films that preceded them, particularly My Hustler (1965), an unprecedented slice of urban gay life; Beauty #2 (1965), the best of the films featuring Edie Sedgwick; The Chelsea Girls (1966), the only experimental film to gain widespread theatrical release; and **** (Four Stars) (1967), the 25-hour long culmination of Warhol's career as a filmmaker.
  • Andy Warhol Was Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928 and Died in Manhattan in 1987

    Andy Warhol Was Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928 and Died in Manhattan in 1987

    ANDY WARHOL Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928 and died in Manhattan in 1987. He attended free art classes offered at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh at a young age. In 1945, after graduating high school, he enrolled at the Carnegie Institute for Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), focused his studies on pictorial design, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1949. Shortly after, Warhol moved to New York City to pursue a career in commercial art. In the late 1950s, Warhol redirected his attention to painting, and famously debuted “pop art”. In 1964, Warhol opened “The Factory”, which functioned as an art studio, and became a cultural hub for famous socialites and celebrities. Warhol’s work has been presented at major institutions and is featured in innumerous prominent collections worldwide. ANDY WARHOL B. 1928, D. 1987 LIVED AND WORKED IN NEW YORK, NY SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2017 Andy Warhol: Self Portrait (Fright Wigs), Skarstedt Upper East Side, New York (NY) The Age of Ambiguity: Abstract Figuration, Figurative Abstraction, Vito Schnabel Gallery, St Moritz (Switzerland) 2016 Andy Warhol - Idolized, David Benrimon Fine Art, New York (NY) Andy Warhol - Shadows, Yuz Museum Shanghai (Shanghai) Andy Warhol: Sunset, The Menil Collection, Houston, TX Andy Warhol: Contact - M. Woods Beijing (China) Andy Warhol: Portraits, Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA) Andy Warhol: Works from the Hall Collection, Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, England) Warhol: Royal, Moco Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands) I‘ll be your mirror. Screen Tests von Andy Warhol, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (GfZK) (Leipzig, Germany) Andy Warhol: Icons - The Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia Art Museums (Charlottesville, VA) Andy Warhol - Little Electric Chairs, Venus Over Manhattan (New York City, NY) Andy Warhol - Shadows, Honor Fraser (Los Angeles, CA) Andy Warhol - Artist Rooms, Firstsite (Colchester, UK) Andy Warhol Portraits, Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA) Andy Warhol.
  • Andy Warhol: When Junkies Ruled the World

    Andy Warhol: When Junkies Ruled the World

    Nebula 2.2 , June 2005 Andy Warhol: When Junkies Ruled the World. By Michael Angelo Tata So when the doorbell rang the night before, it was Liza in a hat pulled down so nobody would recognize her, and she said to Halston, “Give me every drug you’ve got.” So he gave her a bottle of coke, a few sticks of marijuana, a Valium, four Quaaludes, and they were all wrapped in a tiny box, and then a little figure in a white hat came up on the stoop and kissed Halston, and it was Marty Scorsese, he’d been hiding around the corner, and then he and Liza went off to have their affair on all the drugs ( Diaries , Tuesday, January 3, 1978). Privileged Intake Of all the creatures who populate and punctuate Warhol’s worlds—drag queens, hustlers, movie stars, First Wives—the drug user and abuser retains a particular access to glamour. Existing along a continuum ranging from the occasional substance dilettante to the hard-core, raging junkie, the consumer of drugs preoccupies Warhol throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s. Their actions and habits fascinate him, his screens become the sacred place where their rituals are projected and packaged. While individual substance abusers fade from the limelight, as in the disappearance of Ondine shortly after the commercial success of The Chelsea Girls , the loss of status suffered by Brigid Polk in the 70s and 80s, or the fatal overdose of exemplary drug fiend Edie Sedgwick, the actual glamour of drugs remains, never giving up its allure. 1 Drugs survive the druggie, who exists merely as a vector for the 1 While Brigid Berlin continues to exert a crucial influence on Warhol’s work in the 70s and 80s—for example, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol , as detailed by Bob Colacello in the chapter “Paris (and Philosophy )”—her street cred.
  • California State University, Northridge Exploitation

    California State University, Northridge Exploitation

    CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE EXPLOITATION, WOMEN AND WARHOL A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art by Kathleen Frances Burke May 1986 The Thesis of Kathleen Frances Burke is approved: Louise Leyis, M.A. Dianne E. Irwin, Ph.D. r<Iary/ Kenan Ph.D. , Chair California State. University, Northridge ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to Dr. Mary Kenon Breazeale, whose tireless efforts have brought it to fruition. She taught me to "see" and interpret art history in a different way, as a feminist, proving that women's perspectives need not always agree with more traditional views. In addition, I've learned that personal politics does not have to be sacrificed, or compartmentalized in my life, but that it can be joined with a professional career and scholarly discipline. My time as a graduate student with Dr. Breazeale has had a profound effect on my personal life and career, and will continue to do so whatever paths my life travels. For this I will always be grateful. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In addition, I would like to acknowledge the other members of my committee: Louise Lewis and Dr. Dianne Irwin. They provided extensive editorial comments which helped me to express my ideas more clearly and succinctly. I would like to thank the six branches of the Glendale iii Public Library and their staffs, in particular: Virginia Barbieri, Claire Crandall, Fleur Osmanson, Nora Goldsmith, Cynthia Carr and Joseph Fuchs. They provided me with materials and research assistance for this project. I would also like to thank the members of my family.
  • Andy Warhol￢ﾀﾙs Deaths and the Assembly-Line Autobiography

    Andy Warhol￢ﾀﾙs Deaths and the Assembly-Line Autobiography

    OCAD University Open Research Repository Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies 2011 Andy Warhol’s Deaths and the Assembly-Line Autobiography Charles Reeve OCAD University [email protected] © University of Hawai'i Press | Available at DOI: 10.1353/bio.2011.0066 Suggested citation: Reeve, Charles. “Andy Warhol’s Deaths and the Assembly-Line Autobiography.” Biography 34.4 (2011): 657–675. Web. ANDY WARHOL’S DEATHS AND THE ASSEMBLY-LINE AUTOBIOGRAPHY CHARLES REEVE Test-driving the artworld cliché that dying young is the perfect career move, Andy Warhol starts his 1980 autobiography POPism: The Warhol Sixties by refl ecting, “If I’d gone ahead and died ten years ago, I’d probably be a cult fi gure today” (3). It’s vintage Warhol: off-hand, image-obsessed, and clever. It’s also, given Warhol’s preoccupation with fame, a lament. Sustaining one’s celebrity takes effort and nerves, and Warhol often felt incapable of either. “Oh, Archie, if you would only talk, I wouldn’t have to work another day in my life,” Bob Colacello, a key Warhol business functionary, recalls the art- ist whispering to one of his dachshunds: “Talk, Archie, talk” (144). Absent a talking dog, maybe cult status could relieve the pressure of fame, since it shoots celebrities into a timeless realm where their notoriety never fades. But cults only reach diehard fans, whereas Warhol’s posthumously pub- lished diaries emphasize that he coveted the stratospheric stardom of Eliza- beth Taylor and Michael Jackson—the fame that guaranteed mobs wherever they went. (Reviewing POPism in the New Yorker, Calvin Tomkins wrote that Warhol “pursued fame with the single-mindedness of a spawning salmon” [114].) Even more awkwardly, cult status entails dying—which means either you’re not around to enjoy your notoriety or, Warhol once nihilistically pro- posed, you’re not not around to enjoy it.
  • Warhol, Recycling, Writing

    Warhol, Recycling, Writing

    From A to B and Back Again: Warhol, Recycling, Writing Christopher Schmidt I, too, dislike it—the impulse to claim Warhol as silent underwriter in virtually any aesthetic endeavor. Warhol invented reality television. Warhol would have loved YouTube. Jeff Koons is the heterosexual Warhol. It’s Warhol’s world; we just live in it. Is there a critical voice that does not have a claim on some aspect of the Warhol corpus, its bulk forever washing up on the shore of the contemporary? However much I suffer from Warhol fatigue, a quick perusal of The Philos- ophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again is sufficient to pull me back into the camp of Warhol boosters. I first discovered this 241-page little red book—the paperback is designed to look like a Campbell’s soup can—as a college student in the late 90s, when its sunny subversiveness and impatience with all things “intel- lectual” buoyed my spirits through the longueurs of New England winters. Warhol’s charm, the invention and breadth of his thought, thrilled me then and delights me still. The gap between my affection for the book and critical dismis- sal of it begs explanation and redress. Though overlooked as literature, The Philosophy is often mined by critics as a source for Warhol’s thought and personal history without due consideration given to the book’s form or its status as a transcribed, partially ghostwritten per- formance. Instead, Warhol’s aperçus are taken as uncomplicated truth: from Warhol’s brain to my dissertation.
  • Part Two: Synaesthetic Cinema: the End of Drama

    Part Two: Synaesthetic Cinema: the End of Drama

    PART TWO: SYNAESTHETIC CINEMA: THE END OF DRAMA "The final poem will be the poem of fact in the language of fact. But it will be the poem of fact not realized before." WALLACE STEVENS Expanded cinema has been expanding for a long time. Since it left the underground and became a popular avant-garde form in the late 1950's the new cinema primarily has been an exercise in technique, the gradual development of a truly cinematic language with which to expand further man's communicative powers and thus his aware- ness. If expanded cinema has had anything to say, the message has been the medium.1 Slavko Vorkapich: "Most of the films made so far are examples not of creative use of motion-picture devices and techniques, but of their use as recording instruments only. There are extremely few motion pictures that may be cited as instances of creative use of the medium, and from these only fragments and short passages may be compared to the best achievements in the other arts."2 It has taken more than seventy years for global man to come to terms with the cinematic medium, to liberate it from theatre and literature. We had to wait until our consciousness caught up with our technology. But although the new cinema is the first and only true cinematic language, it still is used as a recording instrument. The recorded subject, however, is not the objective external human con- dition but the filmmaker's consciousness, his perception and its pro- 1 For a comprehensive in-depth history of this development, see: Sheldon Renan, An Introduction to the American Underground Film (New York: Dutton Paperbacks, 1967).
  • The Films of Andy Warhol Stillness, Repetition, and the Surface of Things

    The Films of Andy Warhol Stillness, Repetition, and the Surface of Things

    The Films of Andy Warhol Stillness, Repetition, and the Surface of Things David Gariff National Gallery of Art If you wish for reputation and fame in the world . take every opportunity of advertising yourself. — Oscar Wilde In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. — attributed to Andy Warhol 1 The Films of Andy Warhol: Stillness, Repetition, and the Surface of Things Andy Warhol’s interest and involvement in film ex- tends back to his childhood days in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Warhol was sickly and frail as a youngster. Illness often kept him bedridden for long periods of time, during which he read movie magazines and followed the lives of Hollywood celebri- ties. He was an avid moviegoer and amassed a large collection of publicity stills of stars given out by local theaters. He also created a movie scrapbook that included a studio portrait of Shirley Temple with the handwritten inscription: “To Andrew Worhola [sic] from Shirley Temple.” By the age of nine, Warhol had received his first camera. Warhol’s interests in cameras, movie projectors, films, the mystery of fame, and the allure of celebrity thus began in his formative years. Many labels attach themselves to Warhol’s work as a filmmaker: documentary, underground, conceptual, experi- mental, improvisational, sexploitation, to name only a few. His film and video output consists of approximately 650 films and 4,000 videos. He made most of his films in the five-year period from 1963 through 1968. These include Sleep (1963), a five- hour-and-twenty-one minute look at a man sleeping; Empire (1964), an eight-hour film of the Empire State Building; Outer and Inner Space (1965), starring Warhol’s muse Edie Sedgwick; and The Chelsea Girls (1966) (codirected by Paul Morrissey), a double-screen film that brought Warhol his greatest com- mercial distribution and success.
  • ACTING out Rowan University Art Gallery January 20 – March 12, 2011

    ACTING out Rowan University Art Gallery January 20 – March 12, 2011

    ACTING OUT Rowan University Art Gallery January 20 – March 12, 2011 Nina Katchadourian Fahamu Pecou Nancy Popp Shana Robbins ACTING JoeOUT Sola Jaimie Warren Curated by Stuart Horodner A child is told that he or she cannot have a slice of cake and Nina Katchadourian’s discipline-bending work is investigative, then proceeds to scream and cry for several minutes. playful, and precise. She is as comfortable in a library This is a disproportionate response, and acting out conduct sorting books to find latent meanings in their titles as is understood to operate in the gap between desire and she is in rewiring automobiles to emit alarm sounds in disappointment. The words acting and out combine to the form of bird calls. In the passport-sized photograph, imply public displays and testing of wills, with young- Self-Portrait as Sir Ernest Shackleton (2002), she attaches two cat- sters flailing about or holding their breath until an au- erpillars to her upper lip and dons a fluffy white sweater thority figure asserts that “No means no,” and a “time and cap to play with gender while honoring an intrepid explorer. out” is required. Troubled protagonists are sent to their rooms Her video, Mystic Shark (2007), was shot in a hotel room to consider their unacceptable behavior. in Connecticut, and shows the artist holding up a blue book with a line drawing of a shark on it, telegraphing When artists are faced with frustrations over unmet her intention to become like this predatory creature. She wants, their outbursts usually take the form of renewed then proceeds to earnestly try and outfit her mouth with several dedication and persistent production.