AA.VV. Andy Warhol a walk on the wild side (english).

I see everything like that, the surface of things, a kind of mental Braille, I just run my hands over the surface of things. I consider myself an American artist. [...] I represent the U.S. with my art, but that doesn't mean I am making social criticism-I represent those certain objects in my paintings because those are the things I know best. I am not at all trying to make a criticism of the U.S. or trying to show its ugliness: I am just purely an artist.

Scripts bore me. It's much more exciting not to know what's going to happen. I don't think that plot is important. If you see a movie of two people talking, you can watch it over and over again without being bored. You get involved - you miss things - you come back to it ... But you can't see the same movie over again if it has a plot because you already know the ending ... Everyone is rich. Everyone is interesting.

Andy Warhol (versione italiana qui)

After World War II, the world got back on its feet, televisions and supermarkets drunk on wealth, and here in Italy these are the years of the economic boom, customs change, new ideas and cultural models circulate. Andy Warhol in his ineffable ambiguity is one of the fathers of contemporary art and he inhabits this very era, the fabulous 1960s, la Dolce Vita where Fellini also wrote a very blond Nico, the American artist's muse... I am not exhilarated by his work aesthetically, except for the series of "car crashes" and "electric chairs" seen at the Centre Pompidou and of great impact, but in the history of art today his weight is unquestionably enormous. Warhol looks with great acuity at contemporary myths, constructing a visual grammar of immediate impact and readable by anyone, even if totally unfamiliar with art. Thus the paradigm of the historical avant-gardes of the 20th century, that is, of an art made to be understood by a few, which required explanations, writings, theories, manifestos, punctual and specialized knowledge, think for example of Kandinsky's abstractionism is definitively erased.

Warhol erases all this: art is simply what it appears and to make what appears well understandable Warhol looks at contemporary myths, just as the ancient Greeks had theirs in Olympus and on those myths they built an aesthetic, so the great American artist looks at the projections of contemporary man and on those he builds his aesthetic. Rock and music are one of the bases, if not the most important base on which Warhol works to build the myth of himself and of a world easily understood by those who look at his works. That is why he paints and surrounds himself with rock stars or movie stars: they are a great popular myth.

Andy Warhol paints images of Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Liza Minelli, Prince, Debbie Harry, you name it.. He transformed a place, the Factory, and from 1962 to 1968 turned it into a laboratory of reference for creativity in New York. Here the famous serial silkscreens of the father of Pop Art with portraits of Mao were born (still forbidden to circulate in China today: it would be disrespectful of the "great helmsman") of Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor and so many others, but it is at the same time also a film set, a place for fashion shows, a party hangout, the practice room of the legendary Velvet Underground of Lou Reed, John Cale and the beautiful Nico... Here converge to revel in derailing parties Jim Morrison of the Doors, Lou Reed, Nico, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, David Bowie and many other "stars" of the rock firmament. It is no coincidence that Andy Warhol is also involved in the applied arts by signing the artwork of vinyls that have entered legend such as the Velvet Underground's first, Sticky Fingers and Love you live by the Rolling Stones, John Lennon's Menlove Ave and many others. The Velvets' banana and the Stones' jeans are very allusive to mark the desire to provoke and break conventions.

Rock stars will of course reciprocate this attention, dedicating songs to Mr. Andy Warhol, as Bowie did or whole albums to remember him like Lou Reed and John Cale with "Songs for Drella"" and others that you will find in the playlist or asking precisely the great artist to take care of the covers of their records. Drugs aplenty, various debaucheries, overdoses, sex, drugs (art) & rock'n roll and even a few gunshots , but at the same time also the rise of transgender culture with Jackie Curtis, who will so much influence glam with his incredible disguises and of an aesthetic that looks at consumer objects and television gods. The lesson coming out of the Factory, which saw Jim Morrison in the arms of Nico in an intercourse between human gods walking in the footsteps of Prometheus, is in its own way simple and disruptive: art is everyone's, it can be made by everyone for everyone. A real revolution, the disruptive consequences of which we still feel today: not technical skills, beautiful drawing (Warhol made silkscreens) not courtly neoclassical themes or intellectual elaborations of the avant-garde, Cartesian poetics, inspiration to Freud or other devilry.

It is no coincidence that Warhol was a talent scout for artists of a younger generation such as Keith Haring and Basquiat (they also painted canvases four-handedly with the latter) to say that street art itself is for all intents and purposes very much influenced by the master of Pop Art, albeit with a more political and existential slant. I hope I have drawn you a context and now drop into the playlist, CLICK HERE to dive in and you will discover that it contains or artists who talk about Warhol or to whom Warhol dedicated works, whose covers he did, who hung out at the factory, friends of his, part of his imagination... Have a good trip.

© 2023 Enrico Marani = Mr Pian Piano