How Alan Got His Warhol On.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Checked out the Warhol exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago yesterday.
It was cool. Most of the pieces I'd seen already at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, but it didn't matter. Just to soak up the actual presence of the paintings was enough. The emphasis was on his "Death and Disaster" period of the early '60s. It's easy to say that the work was really simplistic; silkscreened photo images on canvas, but you gotta figure that nobody had done anything like that before and had it be considered fine art.
Also this was before Giclee prints (which I sometimes use to explode my images). Way before.
The colors of the pieces really inspired me, as did his use of multiple images. A lot of the pieces looked brand-new and computer generated.
They also were playing his screen tests and the "Warhol: Superstar" documentary. That was really inspiring, too. I've got a zillion hours of DV footage of my DJ travels and things that I haven't gotten around to editing yet. I need a staff that'll work for free like Warhol had =)
In interviews, Warhol comes off as willfully "naive" i.e., he didn't know what he was doing. But he was Machiavellian in real life. That's super-cool.
They didn't allow photos at the Museum so I couldn't get any shots. I tried to sneak some but security was all over the place.
Speaking of art, I was featured in the magazine Mexico Design this month. The article was about multi-talented artists. I was ranked number one (!) alongside actor John Malkovich (fashion design), director/writer David Lynch (furniture design and building) and author Douglas Coupland (architecture). Heavy company! Also some of my art was featured.
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