{"id":11063,"date":"2022-05-14T20:17:26","date_gmt":"2022-05-15T03:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/?p=11063"},"modified":"2023-03-21T23:17:46","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T06:17:46","slug":"andy-warhol-is-still-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/andy-warhol-is-still-dead.html","title":{"rendered":"Andy Warhol is Still Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 9, 2022, Christie\u2019s auction house in New York sold an Andy Warhol silkscreen print titled Shot Sage Blue Marilyn<\/em>; it was the highest price ever paid for an American artwork at an auction.<\/p>\n

Warhol\u2019s 1964 reproduction of actress Marilyn Monroe has as its basis a publicity photo of Monroe from the 1954 film noir thriller, Niagara<\/em>; that original still was shot by photographer Gene Korman. It\u2019s funny how Mr. Korman is usually excluded from this history.<\/p>\n

\"stupid_warhol\"
Tweet from Christie\u2019s, May 9, 2022.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn<\/em> is part of a series of five Marilyn Monroe silkscreen prints published on canvas; all measuring 40 x 40 inches. Each of the five prints utilize Korman\u2019s photo, and possess a different color scheme. There is a red, orange, turquoise, and light blue version, but the sage blue variant is the one currently getting all the attention because of its enormous price tag.<\/p>\n

Alex Rotter, chairman of Christie\u2019s 20th and 21st century art department, stated that Warhol\u2019s Marilyn should be placed with Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus<\/em>, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa<\/em> and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon<\/em> as \u201ccategorically one of the greatest paintings of all time.\u201d Aside from the fact that Shot Sage Blue Marilyn<\/em> is not a painting but a silkscreen print, Warhol\u2019s weak-minded pop bobbles don\u2019t come close to the preeminence of Botticelli or Da Vinci. Even the worst Picasso surpasses the best Warhol. Rotter shouldn\u2019t be a chairman for one of Christie\u2019s departments, but a doorman for one of their auctions.<\/p>\n

\"Gene
Gene Korman\u2019s publicity still of Marilyn Monroe from the 1954 film noir thriller, \u201cNiagara.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Don\u2019t call me an out-of-touch reactionary for not worshiping Andy Warhol. For years a reproduction of his 1982 screenprint Dollar Sign<\/a><\/em> has been hanging in my studio, and the morbid punk rock side of me is intrigued by his Car Crash<\/a><\/em> silkscreen series. However, I was merely amused by these prints and never attributed weightiness, masterful skill, or staggering importance to them.<\/p>\n

Like all of Warhol\u2019s works they were throw away pop culture images.<\/p>\n

The sale of Shot Sage Blue Marilyn<\/em> marks the ongoing commodification of art at the hands of avaricious speculators and investors. The final price of the print was not $195 million but actually $195,040,000. To the average American eaten alive by record high inflation, rising gas prices, and food shortages (thanks Biden), that\u2019s a lot of dough. US inflation hasn\u2019t been this high since 1981, when Ronnie Reagan won the White House from Jimmy Carter.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post\u2014you know, where democracy dies in darkness, let the cat out of the bag with this remark: \u201cThe record sale was set as investors seek out safe-haven investments, such as art, amid uncertainty in global financial markets fueled by Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.\u201d Uh-huh, soldiers fall, stocks rise. In other words, for the oligarchs that have a death grip on the art world\u2019s upper strata, the experience of art is no longer one of contemplation and the wonderment of beauty. No, it\u2019s only a \u201csafe-haven\u201d for investments. Money laundering anyone?<\/p>\n

Once upon a time in the early 1960\u2019s a taxi cab company owner named Robert Scull thought himself a big wig in the art world. He bought art for peanuts from unknowns like Warhol, who at the time was a nobody with empty pockets. Scull purchased Warhol\u2019s 200 One Dollar Bills<\/a><\/em> print for around $2,500; it was Warhol\u2019s first silkscreen print. In 1986 Scull\u2019s estate sold it for $385,000. In 2009 Sotheby\u2019s of New York held an auction where they sold it to a nameless plutocrat for $43.8 million.<\/p>\n

\""200
“200 One Dollar Bills.” Andy Warhol, 1962. Silkscreen, ink, pencil on canvas. Photo\/Sotheby\u2019s. “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” From: Warhol in his own words \u2013 Untitled Statements ( 1963 \u2013 1987).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s not much else to say about Shot Sage Blue Marilyn<\/em>. The print has no hidden message or particular meaning, it advocates, reveals, and supports nothing\u2014like most of Warhol\u2019s works it is just empty fluff. As the artist once said: \u201cI\u2019m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all its meaning.\u201d The only interesting thing about the print is the tale of Dorothy Podber, who discharged a rather explosive critique of the print.<\/p>\n

In the \u201850s and early \u201860s Ms. Podber was a kooky bohemian artist who lived in East Village, Manhattan. She told people she was a witch, a few considered her cracked because of her unhinged practical jokes. In the late \u201850s she ran in Beatnik circles that included the likes of Allen Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones, and in the early \u201860s she helped run the Nonagon Art Gallery, where Yoko Ono first unleashed her conceptual art upon New York. In retrospect that might have been one of Podber\u2019s deranged gags.<\/p>\n

One autumn day in 1964 Podber and her entourage showed up at Warhol\u2019s Factory studio on East 47th. Podber wore white gloves and was costumed in a black leather motorcycle jacket with matching biker pants. She asked Warhol if she could shoot the new Marilyn Monroe canvases stacked along a wall; thinking she was a photographer he answered yes. Podber took off her white gloves, reached into her purse, pulled out a diminutive semi-auto pistol, and began shooting the Monroe images in the forehead. When finished she placed the gun in her bag, put her gloves back on, gathered her retinue, and calmly left the Factory. A terrified Andy Warhol made sure the women would never again be given access to the premises.<\/p>\n

For some reason Warhol didn\u2019t file charges against Podber, but he did change the title for each of the five canvasses by adding the word \u201cshot.\u201d Red Marilyn<\/em> became Shot Red Marilyn<\/em>, Orange Marilyn<\/em> became Shot Orange Marilyn<\/em>, and so on for the turquoise, light blue, and sage blue versions. The only canvas not damaged by gunfire was the sage blue variant, nevertheless it received the \u201cshot\u201d title. Warhol had the damaged silkscreened canvasses repaired. The fact that the prints had been shot only increased their value. A strange world indeed.<\/p>\n

So there you have it, that\u2019s the chronicle of Dorothy Podber. It\u2019s an exquisite tale, better than the story of how Warhol\u2019s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn<\/em> was produced, but I wouldn\u2019t give you a plugged nickel for either. CNN, always a journalistic farce, naturally reported on the $195 million sale<\/a>. Their story mentioned the methods Warhol used in making various portraits of Marilyn, stating: \u201c\u2018Shot Marilyns\u2019 saw the artist shooting portraits of the star through the head with bullets.\u201d They falsely credited Warhol, not Podber, for the vandalism. Why turn to CNN for news?<\/p>\n

Andy Warhol\u2019s soullessness and lack of political insight can be found in his late \u201870s work for the dictatorial monarch Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, more well known as the Shah of Iran. In 1953 the CIA staged a coup that overthrew Iran\u2019s elected government for having nationalized Iran\u2019s oil industry. It was the first regime change operation by the CIA. In the coup\u2019s aftermath the Shah of Iran became the country\u2019s iron-fisted pro-West ruler. His support primarily came from Western power brokers and Iran\u2019s small number of Western educated elites.<\/p>\n

\"Mohammed
Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi (Shah of Iran). Andy Warhol. Silkscreen on paper, 1977.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However the Shah faced opposition from anti-monarchists, social democrats, leftists, and the working poor. But it was the fundamentalist Shi\u2019a muslim majority that posed his biggest threat.<\/p>\n

To maintain control the Shah established a massive secret police force that used kidnappings, imprisonment, beatings, torture, and assassinations to eliminate opponents. That was the situation in Iran when Warhol decided to visit the country in 1976.<\/p>\n

The purpose of his sojourn was to take photos of the Shah and his wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi. The two Royals had commissioned Warhol to create their portraits in silkscreen.<\/p>\n

Warhol delivered his finished commission to the Shah and the Empress in 1977, and was pictured posing with Empress Farah in front of her portrait in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art<\/a>. The museum was founded in \u201877 by Farah, who also inaugurated its opening and was responsible for it\u2019s expansion. In the 70\u2019s Farah had purchased classical and contemporary art from a great number of Western artists, amassing the largest collection of Western art outside the US and Europe with an estimated worth is $3 billion. The Shi\u2019a of Iran living under the Shah\u2019s brutality couldn\u2019t have cared less about her museum.<\/p>\n

\"empress_farah_pahlavi_warhol_1977\"
Empress Farah Pahlavi. Andy Warhol. Silkscreen, 1977.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many in the West were vexed that Warhol collaborated with the Shah. In 1977 the Village Voice published an article written by Alexander Cockburn, James Ridgeway, and Jan Albert titled Beautiful Butchers: The Shah Serves Up Caviar and Torture<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

They mentioned the \u201cfascist chic\u2019s recording angel, Andy Warhol, with his Polaroid and his tape recorder,\u201d as being one of the \u201cbeautiful people\u201d who supported \u201cone of the most savage regimes of the 20th century.\u201d A violent revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979, sweeping fundamentalist Islamists into power; they banned modern art and closed the Tehran Museum. The Islamists hid Farah\u2019s entire collection in the museum\u2019s basement for decades.<\/p>\n

Ironically the Jihadi militants allowed a small number of works from Farah\u2019s collection to be exhibited in 2021, the show was titled: A Review of Andy Warhol\u2019s Works<\/em>. It displayed Warhol\u2019s silly soup cans, and his silkscreen portraits of Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and the founding leader of Communist China, Mao Zedong. The Islamists left hidden in the basement the portraits of the Shah of Iran and Empress Farah Pahlavi… something the poor fools who flocked to the exhibition<\/a> were never told. I bring up Warhol\u2019s escapades in Iran to drive home a point. He was a liberal, but his political convictions were as shallow as the happy talk pablum one could read in the self-published Interview<\/em> magazine he founded in 1969. Having been to Iran he knew what the score was, but it didn\u2019t matter to him. He was obsessed with celebrity and money, and the Shah and Empress Farah had plenty of both.<\/p>\n

\"Empress
Empress Farah Pahlavi with Andy Warhol at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Photographer unknown, 1977.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the mid-70s Warhol was also trying to get a portrait commission out of Imelda Marcos, the clothes-horse wife of Philippine dictator and kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos.<\/p>\n

At the time many people in the Philippines couldn\u2019t afford footwear, but Imelda had a growing collection of over 3,000 expensive shoes\u2014I\u2019m sure that impressed Warhol. Unfortunately for him the commission never came through, as the people of the Philippines drove Ferdinand and Imelda from power in the \u201cPeople Power Revolution.\u201d Wow, Andy sure could pick \u2018em.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of his meteoric career, Warhol remained preoccupied with the celebrity elite, but his limitless portraits of them became ever more superficial, monotonous, and geared towards quick market success. He had become the living embodiment of his famed quote \u201cgood business is the best art,\u201d only he wasn\u2019t producing his best any longer. As his works slipped into mediocrity, Andy Warhol was transformed into a dead metaphor by the corporate press, which endlessly repeated claims of his being a genius; they continue to make such declarations today.<\/p>\n

In his brilliant 2008 documentary The Mona Lisa Curse<\/a><\/em>, Robert Hughes (1938-2012) interviewed billionaire art dealer and collector Alberto Mugrabi, a man who at the time had some 800 Warhol\u2019s in his private collection. Hughes asked Mugrabi \u201cWhat\u2019s your opinion of Warhol?\u201d The collector answered, \u201cI think he is probably the most visionary artist of our time.\u201d Hughes responded with, \u201cI thought he was one of the stupidest people I ever met in my life…. because he had nothing to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert Hughes took a stand against the commodification and denigration of art by monied elites, and because of that stance he was the only art critic to gain my respect. In 2009 he won the International Emmy for Arts Programming<\/a> for The Mona Lisa Curse<\/em>, yet his documentary film has been almost entirely scrubbed from the internet. It certainly is never mentioned by the gatekeepers of the art world, whose mega-profits are threatened by the truths Hughes told. For that reason alone you should watch the movie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After receiving the award, Hughes\u2019 final remarks during the ceremony were these, perhaps the best way to close this report: \u201cForget about the prices. Forget about what Sotheby’s and Christie’s has been doing about our perception of art. Just remember what the serious art is, and why, if we love it, we do love it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 9, 2022, Christie\u2019s auction house in New York sold an Andy Warhol silkscreen print titled Shot Sage Blue Marilyn; it was the highest price ever paid for an American artwork at an auction. Warhol\u2019s 1964 reproduction of actress Marilyn Monroe has as its basis a publicity photo of Monroe from the 1954 film noir thriller, Niagara; that original…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-postmodernism-remodernism","category-prints-posters"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}