On Sunday I saw the screening of Brillo Box (3¢ Off) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The 40-minute documentary was written/directed by Lisanne Skyler and will air on HBO on August 7th. The film tells the story of an Andy Warhol “Brillo Box (3¢ Off)” sculpture that Skyler’s parents bought in 1969 for only $1000, and traded shortly after for another piece of art. The same Brillo Box recently sold for 3 million dollars. When Skyler was a child, her father enclosed the sculpture in Plexiglas and her family basically used it as a coffee table.
In Skyler’s director’s statement, she talks about the drastic change in value of the sculpture: “I was fascinated by this stunning turn of events and wondered about all of the personal decisions that had shaped its journey. What was the role it played in other lives, and what secrets did it hold about my own family?” Skyler’s questions about the box are answered in the film through footage of the Warhol Factory scene, interviews with her parents who spent their lives buying and trading art, and a look into the rapidly changing art world that Skyler witnessed first hand as she grew up.
Where's Warhol? by Catherine Ingram and Andrew Rae Laurence King Publishing 2016, 32 pages, 9.8 x 13 x 0.5 inches $10 Buy a copy on Amazon
Andy Warhol was known for both “making the scene,” literally turning “scenes” into improvised art, and for being impressively awkward and shy within those scenes. So, there really is something fundamentally right about the concept of hiding Andy inside of iconic scenes from history, both art history and beyond.
In Where’s Warhol? art historian Catherine Ingram teams up with artist Andrew Rae to create a visual needle-in-a-haystack picture book inspired by the Where’s Waldo? series. In a series of two-page spreads, Andy, in his iconic striped shirt and shock of silver hair, is hidden within massive crowd scenes. The scenes range from actual places where Andy did hang out (e.g. Studio 54) to historical places and events such as the French Revolution and Germany’s Bauhaus art school. The fun is not only in finding Andy, but in trying to identity all of the other historical figures drawn into these scenes. In the back of the book, many of these characters are pointed out with little anecdotes. And other known people are there, but not identified (like Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith). It’s fun to see just how many characters from history you can identity. There is also enough going on here to reward repeat scans of the pages.
This would be a fun gift book to get for anyone who’s a Warhol fan, a fan of art history, or who just enjoys these kinds of visual puzzle books. Read the rest
Andy Warhol Museum, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from focusc's photostream
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Tell Me Something I Don’t Know is Boing Boing's podcast featuring artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people discussing their work, ideas, and the practical side of how they do what they do. In episode 22, we speak to Eric Shiner, Director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA.
"To Give Voice to Those That Don't Have It" and "Making the Anomalies of Society Into the Paradigms of Society" are among his responsibilities as the museum's director. Over the past twenty years, Andy Warhol's popularity has soared. Shiner talks with us about Warhol's legacy, about exhibiting the museum's collection in the Middle East, China, and Japan, and about engaging fans of the legendary pop artist through social media and interactive technology (on-site at the museum, and online).
In 2013, Shiner curated the Armory Focus portion of the Armory Show. He spoke with us about the commercial side of the art world. He explains, "Warhol himself saw absolutely no separation between art and business."
Finally, Shiner discusses the impact of the internet on the art world and how he finds new and exciting artists. (The opening music in this episode is by Artificial Human.)
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Follow TMSIDK on Twitter Read the rest
Yesterday would have been Andy Warhol's 85th birthday. To mark the occasion, the Warhol Museum and @EarthCam are livestreaming footage of his gravesite. The broadcast is the work of Madelyn Roehrig, a part of her Asking Andy anything project.
Some passers-by wave at the camera. Some talk on their cellphones, apparently unaware of the countless invisible observers. One man, dressed in a kilt, spent many hours at the graveside, playing “Happy Birthday” on a horn and chatting with other Warhol pilgrims. Finally, alone in the dark, he lit up cigarette and took a closer look at Warhol's grave.
The live stream continues today, and visitors still file in and out of the frame to pay their respects—often for 15 minutes or so. Warhol would be amused. Read the rest
"It's the best I've ever seen in my whole life. The most exciting thing."
