Tag Archives: Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol – Style Icon

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Andy Warhol died my junior year of high school. Shortly after that, I became obsessed with him, his life, Interview magazine, but more specifically, his collections. I read every article I could find about the lists of belongings found in his house at the time of his death, the cookie jars, the stacks and stacks of contemporary art by his peers, the art deco furniture, the endless lists. He would go to flea markets every day and collect everything that interested him with very few criteria. Sotheby’s produced a staggering list of objects cataloged from his cram-packed six story Upper East Side townhouse when they were getting ready for the ten day auction: 1,659 pieces of Russel Wright pottery, 267 watches, 72 Navajo blankets and rugs, 61 lots of early 19th-Century American furniture, 37 Art Deco cigarette cases, 33 works by Man Ray, 18 by Marcel Duchamp, 12 Rauschenbergs.

Andy was a hoarder, but when it is a dozen Rauschenbergs, it is a collection. Hoarders have a dozen cats, Andy had rooms so full of Duchamps, he just closed the doors to avoid tripping on them. By the way, that townhouse sold for $35M (and his Montauk house for $50M) recently. He collected all the right things, he pushed the prices and demand of early 20th century utilitarian kitsch items through the roof. Ladies and gentlemen, Andy Warhol. Style Icon.

NAME: Andy Warhol
OCCUPATION: Painter, Filmmaker
BIRTH DATE: August 06, 1928
DEATH DATE: February 22, 1987
EDUCATION: Carnegie Institute of Technology
PLACE OF BIRTH: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
PLACE OF DEATH: New York City, New York
ORIGINALLY: Andrew Warhola

BEST KNOWN FOR: Andy Warhol is famous for his “pop” paintings of everyday consumer goods, like Campbell soup cans, as well as screen-printing portraits of celebrities, like Marilyn Monroe.

Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included Bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression “15 minutes of fame.” In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the “bellwether of the art market.” $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.

Andy Warhol – Style Icon.

Daily Prompt: Mentor Me

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Today’s Daily Prompt is:

“Have you ever had a mentor? What was the greatest lesson you learned from him or her?”

This will be short.

No.

I have never had a mentor.  I am sure it is due to a combination of reasons.  For years, I was a misunderstood loner that would not have been welcoming to anyone taking me under their wing.  That and I have never met anyone that has “been trough it” and was welcoming to me.

It is what it is.

I am sure that is why I created my own virtual mentors by reading autobiographies, biographies, novels, etc.  I have a group of people that have become  very important to me through reading their collections of letters and other writings.  I have learned through them and the years of reading those writings helped me change my life into what it is today.

I owe a huge thank you to people that are dead and never even knew me.  I would like to thank F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gerald and Sara Murphy, Gertrude Stein, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Toni Morrison, Douglas Coupland, and Ramon Novarro.

I have added some others under “Related Articles” that were better at this exercise than me.

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Antonio Lopez – Style Icon

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Antonio Lopez (February 11, 1943 – March 17, 1987) was a fashion illustrator whose work appeared in such publications as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Interview and The New York Times. Several books collecting his illustrations have been published. In his obituary, the New York Times called him a “major fashion illustrator.” He generally signed his works as “Antonio.”

Antonio Lopez is the Picasso of fashion illustration. Mostly known as just plain ‘Antonio’, he was a giant in the field of fashion illustration. He captured the pulse of style from the 60s to the 80s, and is still revered as the most inspiring illustrator by today’s practitioners. He worked with a variety of materials including pencil, pen and ink, charcoal, watercolor and polaroid film. His work appeared frequently in Vogue, Harper’s bazzar, Elle and Interview.

Recording and predicting contemporary style trends, Antonio also used his immense versatility to adopt a broad range of art movements, from Pop Art to Surrealism.

For Antonio, life – bestial and sublime – surpassed any fiction. His illustrations and photographs capture the beautiful people who are part of celebrity folklore, and who were more often than not his friends: Jerry Hall (to whom he was engaged), Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, Audrey Hepburn, Andy Warhol (with whom he worked on Interview magazine), Paloma Picasso and Marlene Dietrich.

Packed with previously unpublished material, this is a thrilling retrospective about an artist who is represented in major collections from the Metropolitan to the Louvre. Even posthumously, Antonio has not relinquished his grip on the fashion world: his style and quest for beauty live on.

Keith Haring – Style Icon

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Keith Haring is someone whose work you know.  You have seen it everywhere from MTV in the early days to yesterday on the side of a bus.  His influence and legacy are far-reaching with no visible end in sight.  I remember I bought a Keith Haring shirt one summer in Traverse City Michigan, it must have been 1990. It depicted a snake getting cut in half with the words “End AIDS” running under it.  I loved that shirt, it made me feel powerful and involved and it gave me a voice.NAME: Keith Haring
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: May 04, 1958
DEATH DATE: February 16, 1990
EDUCATION: Ivy School of Professional, Art School of Visual Arts
PLACE OF BIRTH: Reading, Pennsylvania
PLACE OF DEATH: New York, New York

BEST KNOWN FOR: During his all-too-brief life, artist Keith Haring became a sensation in the art world with his bold, cartoon and graffiti influenced works during the 1980s.

The Wiki:

Born on May 4, 1958, in Reading, Pennsylvania. During his all-too-brief life, Keith Haring became a sensation in the art world with his bold, cartoon and graffiti influenced works during the 1980s.

Growing up in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, he spent many hours drawing with his father. Haring was fascinated by the popular cartoon art of Walt Disney and Charles Schultz.

Haring briefly attended the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh after graduating high school in 1976. He dropped out after two semesters. In 1978, Haring decided to return to school, moving to New York City to become a student at the School of Visual Arts. With its thriving underground art scene, New York seemed to be the perfect fit for the young artist. He began using the city as his canvas, making chalk drawings of barking dogs and babies in subway stations. He also befriended such other emerging artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat and helped organize exhibitions at nightclubs and other alternative locations.

In 1982, Haring had his first New York one-man show at the Shafrazi Gallery. Not only did he create paintings and sculptures for the show, he engulfed the entire gallery with his bold color choices and frenetic designs. A critical success, he soon became one of most popular artists of the time with exhibits in Japan, Brazil, and many other countries.

Haring collaborated with other artists and performers, including Andy Warhol and William Burroughs.

Wanting to make his art more accessible, Haring opened Pop Shop in New York City in 1986. The store sold posters, t-shirts, and other items baring his artwork and designs. He was also interested many social causes, painting an anti-drug mural that same year. In all, he did more than 50 public works and held numerous workshops for children. In 1988, Haring discovered that he had AIDS. The next year he created the Keith Haring Foundation to support AIDS organizations and children’s programs.

Haring died on February 16, 1990, of AIDS-related complications. His works continues to be exhibited around the world and many are owned by such prestigious museums as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Polaroid by Andy Warhol

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Leigh Bowery – Style Icon

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It is very brave to make your life performance art.  You can see his influences in people are considered ‘edgy’ today.

Born: Leigh Bowery 26 March 1961 Sunshine, Victoria, Australia
Died: 31 December 1994 (aged 33) London, England, United Kingdom
Occupation: performance artist, fashion designer, club promoter, actor and model

Leigh Bowery (26 March 1961 – 31 December 1994) was an Australian performance artist, club promoter, actor, pop star, model and fashion designer, based in London. Bowery is considered one of the more influential figures in the 1980s and 1990s London and New York art and fashion circles influencing a generation of artists and designers. His influence reached through the fashion, club and art worlds to impact, amongst others, Alexander McQueen, Lucian Freud, Vivienne Westwood, Boy George, Antony and the Johnsons, John Galliano, the Scissor Sisters, David LaChapelle, Lady Bunny plus numerous Nu-Rave bands and nightclubs in London and New York which arguably perpetuated his avant garde ideas.

Glimmers of the influences of film maker John Waters and artist Andy Warhol can be seen in his keen appreciation of bad taste, truly outlandish self presentation and a deep desire to shock and confuse. “I want to be the Andy Warhol of London” he once said. “Dressed-up,” he was obviously “Modern Art on legs” (as Boy George commented), but in daytime attire the badly-fitting, obvious, disturbing wigs are a nod to Warhol’s self-presentation strategies that has thus far seemed invisible to both critics and friends alike.
Other art historical parallels include an early 80s attempt at Vincent van Gogh type ear-cutting with friend Trojan (in an attempt to out do nightclub rivals), and as a result inflicted facial perforations that he was warned would not heal (reminiscent of Warhol’s weeping wounds). Bowery made a full auto-couture appearance at the 1986 Warhol show Success is a job in New York at London’s Serpentine Gallery with Nicola and an unknown assistant.

He became known to a wider audience by appearing in a Post-Modernist/Surrealist series of television and cinema and commercials for the Pepe jeans company, MTV London and other commissions such as stage work for rock band U2. He also appeared regularly in articles, vox pops and as cover star in London’s i-D magazine. Bowery was also Art Director for the famous video for Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”.

As a character he featured in the stage musical Taboo that was based on the New Romantic movement. It also featured actors playing Marilyn, Boy George, Steve Strange and other stars of the early 1980s. The musical, which was written by Mark Davies with music composed partly by Boy George, was a London West End hit. American media star Rosie O’Donnell financed a much- altered version for Broadway, but this was not successful.
Johnny Rozsa’s photographs of Bowery have been exhibited in several museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Kunsthalle in Vienna, and the Kunstverein in Hanover.

Candy Darling – Style Icon

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Candy Darling (November 24, 1944 – March 21, 1974) was an American actress, best known as a Warhol Superstar. A male-to-female transsexual, she starred in Andy Warhol’s films Flesh (1968) and Women in Revolt (1971), and was a muse of the protopunk band The Velvet Underground.

Candy Darling was born James Lawrence Slattery in Forest Hills, Queens, son of Theresa Phelan, a bookkeeper at Manhattan’s Jockey Club, and James (Jim) Slattery, who was described as a violent alcoholic.[1] There is some conjecture around her year of birth. According to former Warhol associate, Bob Colacello, Candy was born in 1946, while IMDb has listed her year of birth as 1948. Her friend, roommate, and posthumous editor, Jeremiah Newton, states that she was born on November 24, 1944.

Her first assumed name was Hope Slattery. According to Bob Colacello, Darling adopted this name sometime in 1963/1964 after she started going to gay bars in Manhattan and making visits to a doctor on Fifth Avenue for hormone injections. Jackie Curtis stated that Candy adopted the name from a well-known Off-Off Broadway actress named Hope Stansbury, with whom she lived for a few months in an apartment behind the Caffe Cino so that she could study her. Holly Woodlawn remembers that Darling’s name evolved from Hope Dahl to Candy Dahl and then to Candy Cane. Jeremiah Newton believed she adopted her forename out of a love for sweets. In her autobiography, Woodlawn recalled that Darling had adopted the name because a friend of hers affectionately called her “darling” so often that it finally stuck.

Before they met, in 1967, Darling saw Andy Warhol at the after-hours club called The Tenth of Always. Candy was with Jackie Curtis, who invited Warhol to a play that she had written and directed, called Glamour, Glory and Gold, starring Darling, as “Nona Noonan”, and a young Robert De Niro, who played six parts in the play. It was performed at Bastiano’s Cellar Studio on Waverly Place. Taylor Mead brought Warhol to see it and afterwards went to the club Salvation in Sheridan Square, where he was joined by Candy and Curtis at his table.

Warhol cast Darling in a short comedic scene in Flesh (1968) with Jackie Curtis and Joe Dallesandro. After Flesh, Candy was cast in a central role in Women In Revolt (1971). She played a Long Island socialite, drawn into a woman’s liberation group called PIGS (Politically Involved Girls), by a character played by Curtis. Interrupted by cast disputes encouraged by Warhol, Women in Revolt took longer to film than its predecessor and went through several title changes before it was released. Darling wanted it called Blonde on a Bum Trip since she was the blonde, while Curtis and Woodlawn told her it was more like “Bum on a Blonde Trip”, titles which were both used in the film during Candy’s interview scene.

Women in Revolt was first shown at the first Los Angeles Filmex as Sex. Later it was shown as Andy Warhol’s Women, an homage to George Cukor. Unable to get a distributor for the film, Warhol rented out the Cine Malibu on East 59th Street and launched the film with a celebrity preview on February 16, 1972. After the screening there was a dinner in Candy’s honor at Le Parc Périgord restaurant, on Park Avenue, followed by a party at Francesco Scavullo’s townhouse, where they watched TV reviews of the movie, some of which called it “a rip-off”, and that it “looked as if it were filmed underwater,” and “proves once again that Andy Warhol has no talent. But we knew that since the Campbell’s Soup cans.”

Among the guests at Darling’s party were D.D. Ryan, Sylvia Miles, George Plimpton, Halston, Giorgio di Sant ‘Angelo and Egon and Diane von Furstenberg. Jackie Curtis stood out in the cold, along with other gate crashers. When a security guard asked, “My God, what are they giving away in there?” one of the guests responded, “Would you believe, a transvestite?”

The day after the celebrity preview. a group of women wearing army jackets, pea coats, jeans and boots and carrying protest signs demonstrated outside the cinema against the film, which they thought was anti-women’s liberation. When Darling heard about this, she said, “Who do these dykes think they are anyway?… Well, I just hope they all read Vincent Canby’s review in today’s Times. He said I look like a cross between Kim Novak and Pat Nixon. It’s true – I do have Pat Nixon’s nose.”

Darling died of lymphoma on March 21, 1974, aged 29, at the Columbus Hospital division of the Cabrini Health Center.[6] In a letter written on her deathbed and intended for Andy Warhol and his followers, Darling said, “Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life . . . I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death. (D)id you know I couldn’t last. I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again.”

Her funeral was attended by huge crowds, including friends Pat Ast and Julie Newmar; a piano piece was played by Faith Dane; Gloria Swanson was remembered for saluting Darling’s coffin.

Darling is the subject of The Velvet Underground’s song “Candy Says” and was one of several Warhol associates mentioned in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”.

The Kinks’ song “Lola” was supposedly inspired by Candy Darling.

An image of her, taken from Women in Revolt, was also featured on the front cover of the 1987 single “Sheila Take a Bow” by the English group The Smiths. The last song on lead singer Morrissey’s solo album You Are the Quarry is called “You Know I Couldn’t Last,” a clear reference to her famous deathbed quote.

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Dearest Andy

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Letters of Note: Dearest Andy.

Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor waited 14 years to acquire her own, personal version of the Andy Warhol silk-screens in which she featured; an iconic collection of pieces that were in many ways an extension of Warhol’s infatuation with the star. One can only imagine how much this subsequent letter of thanks, written by Taylor, meant to the artist.

Transcript follows. Image courtesy of Gareth W. Many thanks to Adrian Arratoon for the tip.

Elizabeth Taylor

March 21, 1977

Dearest Andy

I’m so proud I finally have your “Liz” and thank you for signing it so sweetly to me.

I do love you.

Elizabeth or Liz

(of A.W.’s fame)

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Grace Jones – Style Icon

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Birth name: Grace Jones
Born: 19 May 1952 (age 59) Linstead, St. Catherine, Jamaica
Occupations: actress, singer/songwriter, model, artist

Grace Jones (born May 19, 1952) is a Jamaican-American singer, model and actress.
Jones started out as a model and became a muse to Andy Warhol, who photographed her extensively. During that era she regularly went to the New York City nightclub Studio 54. Grace secured a record deal with Island Records in 1977, which resulted in a string of dance-club hits. In the late 1970s, she adapted the emerging electronic music style and adopted a severe, androgynous look with square-cut hair and angular, padded clothes. Many of her the singles were hits on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play and Hot Dance Airplay charts, for example 1981 “Pull Up to the Bumper“, which spent seven weeks at #2 on the U.S. dance chart. Jones was able to find mainstream success in Europe, particularly the United Kingdom, scoring a number of Top 40 entries on the UK Singles Chart. Her most notable albums are Warm Leatherette, Nightclubbing and Slave to the Rhythm, while her biggest hits (other than “Pull Up to the Bumper”) are “I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)”, “Private Life”, “Slave to the Rhythm” and “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You)”.

Jones is also an actress. Her acting occasionally overshadowed her musical output in America; but not in Europe, where her profile as a recording artist was much higher. She appeared in some low-budget films in the 1970s and early 1980s. Her work as an actress in mainstream film began in the 1984 fantasy-action film Conan the Destroyer alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the 1985 James Bond movie A View to a Kill. In 1986 she played a vampire in Vamp, and both acted in and contributed a song to the 1992 film Boomerang with Eddie Murphy. In 2001, she appeared in Wolf Girl alongside Tim Curry.

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Waldina.com 300 posts later

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This weekend, Waldina.com published it’s 300th post.  I made a photo collage of  some of the photos used in previous blog posts (and some to come, I have about 135 posts saved for future publication).  I am thinking about changing the banner photo to a slice of the photo, it is kind of neat.  If you have any ideas of people, places, things, etc you find inspiring and want to share, please pass them on to me and I will add them to one of the various lists.

Here are some stats as of right now:

10,662: views all-time

314: views on your busiest day, April 16, 2012

Blog Posts and their number of views:

Louis XVI of France – Style Icon 882
John Steinbeck – Style Icon 419
Barbra Streisand – Style Icon 365
Bianca Jagger – Style Icon 235
Carmen Dell’Orefice – Style Icon 219
Anjelica Huston – Style Icon 194
Judy Lewis, Secret Daughter of Hollywood, Dies at 76 192
10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling – Self Help 182
Alexander Calder – Style Icon 181
Ali MacGraw – Style Icon 129
Jean Harlow – Style Icon 117
Judy Blume – Style Icon 112
Doris Day – Style Icon 104

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Edie Sedgwick – Style Icon

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I am not exactly sure why It Girls tend to end up cautionary tales of what happens when you fly to close to the sun, but they do.  Maybe in order to be an It Girl, it requires quite a bit of excess (money, drugs, alcohol, etc) and it is hard to get away from those things without scars.  Whatever the reason, she was irreverent, insolent, and gorgeous.  Ladies and gentlemen, Edie Sedgwick.  Style Icon.

Born: April 20, 1943 Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Died: November 16, 1971 (aged 28) Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Occupation: Artist, socialite, model, actress

Edith Minturn “Edie” Sedgwick (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress, socialite, fashion model and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol’s superstars. Sedgwick became known as “The Girl of the Year” in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol’s short films in the 1960s. She was dubbed an “It Girl”, while Vogue magazine also named her a “Youthquaker”.

Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman” and “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” from his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde are purportedly about Sedgwick. His 1965 No. 2 single “Like a Rolling Stone” was also reportedly inspired by her.

In 1989 rock band The Cult released a single Edie (Ciao Baby) to promote their breakthrough album Sonic Temple. It peaked on the US charts at #17.

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