Clearly a night of titans. Warhol, Capt. Lou Albano, Cindy Lauper and “Mean” Gene Okerlund. The zenith of the rock and wrestling connection.
st/glasstire
1 CommentCategory: Warhol
I’ve recently discovered a new guilty pleasure – pretty much all of it is listed in the headline. Frankly it all makes a bit of sense if you follow the Warhol scene and go west. Going west being the penultimate thing that americans do.
Would I call it art? No, but I’d call it “Relational Aesthetics”.
The short lived Star Magazine (not to be confused with the current Star Magazine) was the most subversively notorious of all of it. Found in the grocery store next to magazines like Teen, Tiger Beat, Teen Beat and all the rest, Star would openly discuss the whole groupie scene – but would be able to stay on the PG-13 side of it. No easy feat.
The downside that Star gave the LA “groupie scene” was a new shot of youth – probably the last thing the existing girls wanted was a bunch of desperate, attention starved, thirteen year old girls who relished in the fact that they were jail-bait – and could care less. The most common knock against the “older” girls was exactly that – being called old. Star’s greatest moment was the “Sunset Strip Groupies” article in which Sable Star and Queenie call the other girls old – the other girls were all of 23.
“You couldn’t trust the new LA groupies, who were desperate, discouraged, groveling ego seekers. The love of music had become secondary to preening in Star magazine, standing next to Anybody In A Band. It was scary out there. It was fictitious and haunted.”
– Pamela Des Barres
Star magazine despite it’s over use of the word foxy is an amazing time capsule. Routinely featuring it’s own comic called Groupies, monthly columns; The Beauty and the Fox, an always amazing letters page, record reviews, etc. Great articles like: Chain Gang High School, Guys Who’ll Use You, Get Him Back- On His Knees!, Olga Korbut Goes Foxy, Nose-Job Diary, The Black Foxy Lady Look, will certainly keep you reading.
You might be wondering were you can find issues of this rare and short lived magazine. Go here: star1973.com. Ryan Richardson has turned his appreciation into a great web site with all 5 issues of Star.
Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco was pretty much the ground zero of the LA glam world and there are enough stories floating around to keep anyone amused for at least a few days. I’ll let you do some research on that one.
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My view of Warhol is like a pendulum – constantly swinging back and forth between love and indifference. However this series – especially this presentation of this body of work is one of the true highlights of his work as a painter. The work consists of a number of presentations of the same two images with the only difference being the limited color palette and minor underpainting. While using these minimal tools to great effect, “Shadows” shows why someone once said that maybe only ten people in the world really know anything about painting at any given time – and Warhol was always one of those ten.
Shadows is On view through March 27, 2011 at Dia:Beacon and will be travelling to the Chicago Arts Club in April, 2011 and the Hirshhorn in October 2011.
I’m a fan of Marclay’s work, but with any artist some things hit and some things miss (sometimes by a lot, sometimes by a little) The two pieces by Marclay at Paula Cooper right now – it’s both.
I would guess the big story would be the premier of Marclay’s new video work – which I love the premise of. The video is 24 hours and it corresponds with the time of day in the location it’s being shown in – in other words when it’s 4:18 on the screen, it’s 4:18 in reality or in this case, New York City. In that part it’s clever. In watching it, I became focused on what time it was and how it was displayed that the narrative really went away (this could also be because there is no narrative). I found myself thinking about time, processing time in my head, and waiting for the next image of the clock to appear.
Funny enough, I found myself more interested in this outside the gallery (before and after) than inside actually watching the piece. Was it because I had just connected with a friend from out of town and wanted to talk or was it something else. Not sure. However the piece is a winner – I’m just not sure it’s a winner when you are in front of it. So it may be a bit problematic.
Also on display is a sculpture, Moebius Loop (image above) created of cassette tapes and zip ties, it’s use of reclaimed materials and cheap connections make for a very engaging artwork. In thinking deeper about the use of zip ties on this work – I started thinking a bit about how music connects communities through common language and events. In both of these pieces Marclay gives us a good bit to think about.
Bonus Play: “The Clock” to me carries with it a shared approach with Warhol’s “Screen Tests”. Intial viewing of the screen test may be viewed in many ways, but while viewing the screen tests I always started to become aware of time – knowing these were only three minutes. Often the seemed like the longest three minutes I had encountered.
(above) Christian Marclay. Moebius Loop, 1994, cassette tapes, nylon ties; 24 x 84 x 240 in.
Leave a CommentMost readers know I have a book problem.
This is probably best shown on the number of book related posts I’ve done recently versus art related posts (all that will start to tip the other way next week). Anyway, I have a real desire to own a copy of Andy Warhol’s Index, not everyone knows about this book – published in the 60’s it was viewed as a children’s book for adults. Well a children’s book for drugged adults of the sixties.
Index, next to Marshall Mcluhan’s, The Medium is the Message was probably one of the first true “Pop” books. Featuring a 3d cover, a balloon, a working accordion, a Velvet Underground picture disc, a pop-up castle, special die cuts, Packed with photos by Billy Name, and more wackiness – it is a curious memento of that particular scene.
One that I will admit to having far too much interest in.
I’ve not been able to part with $500 (or more) to bring one of these guys home with me, but If you’ve got one floating around let me know… I’ve found a pretty good source of images of the book and thought I’d share. I think its curious at a minimum.
