Andy Warhol's New York

The first time that I ever heard of Andy Warhol was when he died.

It was February, 1987, and I had just turned ten, and some girl in my 4th grade class mentioned that he was dead. The name meant nothing to me (not many ten year old boys care about glam art) but in the passing years I learned about Andy Warhol, the artist, the man, the legend.

I learned about his iconic paintings -- Campbell Soup cans, Marylin Monroe, etc. I learned about The Factory, his downtown space where he made art and helped others to do so. I learned about his involvement in helping to launch my favorite band, The Velvet Underground, to prominence. And I learned his most famous quote about everyone being famous for fifteen minutes.

Warhol was a native of Pittsburgh (like my dad's family) who migrated to NYC as a young aspiring artist. In the 1960s, when he was producing his cutting edge art, he also became a celebrity, wearing his iconic jackets and over sized sunglasses, being seen at clubs and shows, and having lots of hangers on abuzz around him. Until his death, Warhol basically defined the New York art scene. He was New York art. 

His death was a trauma to the New York art world and it has never fully recovered from it. 

No one ever really did (or could) take his place. I suppose Warhol was sui generis -- a unique man producing unique art at a unique time, in a city that was very different from today. He could never be replaced. Back in '87, New York was still recovering from the fiscal crises, crime was high, white flight still occurring, a malaise still shrouding the town. Warhol wasn't just producing art, he was giving the city a much needed boost of confidence. A quarter century after his death, the city is much different (and much less depressed) and Warhol's work is now the stuff of art school curriculum). 

So what was his New York, what was the town that he inhabited -- and how did he inhabit it -- all those years ago?

This article sheds some light on the subject. A few takeaways about Warhol's NYC:

When he first came to NYC, Warhol practically stalked Truman Capote, so obsessed was the young artist was with the great writer's work.

Warhol was an intense, practicing Roman Catholic, and often worshiped at St. Thomas More on East 89th street (a rather uptown, bourgeois place that the downtown, hipster Warhol went).

He may have been the coolest man in town, but Warhol lived with his mother in NYC for 20 years.

He was shot by a deranged woman named Valerie Solanos but survived. You can see the movie "I Shot Andy Warhol" for the full story.  

And so much more.

Today Warhol has merged into NYC's collective memory. No longer a man, he's now one of our favorite myths. But he's still around. Oh yes -- go to Union Square and you'll see a hideous chrome statue of him. Personally, I think it does him a great injustice. 

I'm sure Andy would have loved it.  

The New York Art World in the Movies

The New York art world of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s has become, like the nightclub scene of 1920s and 1930s Berlin, an era legendary for its youthful exuberance, artistic innovation, libertine behavior, and unrestrained weirdness and decadence.

This was when starving artists could still afford to live in Soho and the Village, and devote their lives to creating strange, conceptual work. The hip downtown art world in New York came to prominence via the influential work of Andy Warhol. He became a God to all those aspiring artists rushing to NYC back in the day, and his "Factory" studio nurtured the talents of many of these artists. Of course, when they weren't making weird art, they were doing lots of drugs and having all sorts of exotic sex. Their lives became, in some cases, more interesting than their art.

By the 1980s, the downtown art world had become more popular and wild than ever but it was really the end of this era. Warhol died in 1987 and the gentrification of the 1990s made downtown Manhattan way too expensive for starving artists. By the year 2000, Soho and the Village were playgrounds for the rich, and aspiring artists were exiled to Brooklyn and Queens -- or out of the city altogether.

This world still exists today, however, in the movies. If you're interested, not only in the New York art scene of Andy Warhol and his protegees, but also in kind of New York that doesn't exist anymore, you should check out the following films:

I Shot Andy Warhol: Valerie Solanos was an aspiring writer who became obsessed with Andy Warhol and hoped she'd produce a play she wrote. When he and his Factory cohorts ostracized her, Solanos actually shot him (as the title suggests) and ended up in an asylum. This 1996 movie stars Lilly Taylor as Valerie Solanos and really takes you into the heart of the New York art scene at its zenith.

Factory Girl: this 2006 movie stars Sienna Miller and Hayden Christensen (he of Star Wars) about Edie Sedgwick, who was a hanger-on in Andy Warhol's Factory and who met a tragic end.

Basquiat: this 1996 movie stars Jeffrey Wright as the artist Jean Michel Basquiat who became The Artist in 1980s Manhattan but then OD'd in 1988 at the age of 27.

Slaves of New York: Based on the stories of Tama Janowitz, this 1989 movie stars Bernadette Peters as Eleanor who lives with her miserable superstar artist boyfriend Stash in the East Village. Eleanor is Stash's "slave", meaning she can't afford NOT to live with him and thus he can treat her however he wants. Eleanor is an aspiring artist herself (she makes weird hats) and, through her art, is trying to find her happiness and freedom from Stash. Slaves of New York is, believe it or not, a Merchant-Ivory movie that was a big departure from their English costume dramas. As the clip above shows, its a long way from the likes E.M Forster.

"Regarding Warhol" at the Metropolitan Museum

Recently the family and I went to the new exhibit at the Met, Regarding Warhol, an interesting hybrid show of work by the legendary artist and those he influenced.

Andy Warhol was perhaps the most famous American artist of the last fifty years. If anyone defined art in NYC and America in the 1960s and 1970s, it was this Pittsburgh-born transplant who married the avante-garde, almost Dada-esque sensibilities of the counter-culture with the world of commerce and pop culture.

His paintings were of Campbell's soup cans, Marilyn Monroe, and totally unknown people. He was unabashed in making art that people either loved or hated. Besides paintings, he also made movies -- very, very weird movies -- of people sitting at a table doing nothing, or making love, or (as we see in this show) a nearly eight-hour single shot of the Empire State Building. Either you found his work the aesthetic equivalent of a warm hug or a cold slap -- or both. That was the whole point.

Andy Warhol was an artist who became more than just his work -- he became an icon, an idea, an inspiration. And that's the whole point of this exhibit.

Many of the other artists featured in this exhibit are, to be honest, people I never heard of. Except for one -- Jeff Koons -- perhaps the most famous and controversial artist Warhol ever influenced. While the Warhol work is (obviously) great and classic, I honestly found the work of the other artists rather uninteresting and unmemorable. When it comes to Koons' work, I find it less funky than boring and anti-septic. I honestly don't know why his work sells so well.

Still, I would urge you to see this exhibit for two reason. First, it makes you realize what a truly great, revolutionary artist Andy Warhol was and how his work managed to be both of his time and timeless. Second, the exhibit has perhaps the most beautiful ending of any exhibit I've ever gone to anywhere. I won't give it away -- you gotta see it yourself -- but it makes the whole experience worth it.

This exhibit has generated a lot of controversy (like the master himself) so I would recommend reading them here and here.   

Remembering the Greats

During my hiatus, the great movie director Sidney Lumet died at the age of 86. His career spanned decades and decades, and he made many classic movies, several set in NYC: 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Prince of the City, The Verdict (and many many more). A number of the actors and actresses in his movies were nominated for and won Oscars and actors like Henry Fonda, Al Pacino, Sean Connery, and Paul Newman gave some of their greatest performances in his films. He was a real New York great, a legend, and he made the cultural tapestry of this city all the richer.

And that's one of the great things about NYC: not only do we have amazing buildings and institutions in this town, we also have amazing people -- characters -- who go on to become what you might call "the greats." Boss Tweed, Fiorello LaGuardia, Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, heck even that nutjob Donald Trump -- people whose personalities and work give this city its edge. The id and ego of this town.

The New York Press this week has two articles about two New York greats that you might not know much about but they definitely rank as greats. 

One was George "Ginky" SanSouci who died last month and who many revere as one of the best pool players this city has ever had. I don't know much about the game of pool but apparently he was a dynamo -- think Tom Cruise in The Color of Money only real.  



Another is Candy Darling, one of the first transgendered New York personalities whose was a part of Andy Warhol's Factory back in the 1960s. Candy was a flamboyant, outrageous figure in the downtown art scene -- the kind of person who knew everybody, went everywhere, did everything (and everyone) and did a whole lot of living in her short life. Candy is the subject of a new documentary and she has become a gay icon over the last several decades. Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground dedicated a song to her called "Candy Says" and she's an important character in the 1996 movie I Shot Andy Warhol. Candy was a real New York great whose spirit still lives on and forms our city today. 

"I Shot Andy Warhol" (1996)

I remembering seeing this movie in the summer of 1996. It blew me away and I'm happy that the entire thing is now available on YouTube. Watch it here.

You can also review the Mr NYC Andy Warhold archive here and read more about the life of Valerie Solanas and the SCUM Manifesto. 

Wild Times at The Chelsea Hotel

Currently I'm reading the Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel by Sherill Tippins.

Published in 2013, the book is an absorbing saga about how this one building, this distinctive residential hotel on West 23rd Street, became a mecca for some of the most brilliant and important artists (American and otherwise) who ever lived. Founded in 1884, and for more than a century afterwards, it has provided a communal haven for those who pursue a life of the mind, a life in the arts and culture, a life at odds with mainstream society. Inspired by the 19th-century socialist Fourierism movement that emphaized self-sufficient communinal living, the Chelsea Hotel was a place that embraced and accepted anyone -- all for a very cheap rent. 

The list of people who lived and worked at the Chelsea over the generations is mind-boggling. To name just a very few: Mark Twain, O. Henry, Dylan Thomas, Tennessee Williams, Alan Ginsburg, Arthur C. Clarke (who wrote 2001 there) as well as his collaborator Stanley Kubrick, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious (who infamously killed his girlfriend Nancy there in 1978), Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin (who hooked up there), Willem de Kooning, the notorious Robert Mapplethorpe, Diego Rivera, even the Divine Miss M (Bette Midler for you ignoramouses). And that's barely scratching the surface of the great talents that resided there many different times in the last 130+ year. 

The Chelsea Hotel has also been the subject of art itself: the groundbreaking Portrait of Jason was shot there in 1966 as well as part of the first-ever reality show, An American Family. Andy Warhol probably made it famous for the rest of the world with the movie he made there, Chelsea Girls. 

The cultural impact and legacy of the Chelsea Hotel cannot be overstated.

But, at the end of the day, it's a piece of NYC real estate, which means its had lots of different owners and been subject to various legal battles over the decades. And there still are to this day with the current owners and developers fighting the tenants who wish to maintain its Bohemian glory. It's a classic case of money vs. culture, the future vs. the past, crass taste vs. good taste, people who want to live in the past vs. people who could care less. Reading about it, you don't know whether to laugh or cry. 

Sounds like a drama that could have written at the Chelsea Hotel back in its hayday!

You can read the previous posts about the Chelsea Hotel here.