The Pretty Things are an English rock and roll band from London, who originally formed in 1963. They took their name from Bo Diddley's 1955 song "Pretty Thing" and, in their early days, were dubbed by the British press the "uglier cousins of the Rolling Stones". Their most commercially successful period was the mid 1960s, although they continue to perform to this day. David Bowie covered two of their songs on his album Pin Ups.

Taylor was once again playing guitar, with May singing and playing harmonica. They recruited Brian Pendleton (born 13 April 1944, Heath Town, Wolverhampton – died 16 May 2001, Maidstone, Kent) on rhythm guitar; John Stax (born John Edward Lee Fullegar, 6 April 1944, Crayford, Kent) on bass; and Pete Kitley, replaced by Viv Andrews (on drums) and then by Viv Prince (born Vivian Martin Prince, 9 August 1941, Loughborough, Leicestershire)on drums.

S.F. Sorrow was commercially unsuccessful, with no immediate release in the US. However, the album was subsequently picked up by Motown and issued with a different cover on its Rare Earth Records label. The work received only modest support from EMI, and its depressing narrative probably did not help sales.

During the late 1960s, the band made some extra money by recording for music library company DeWolfe. Some of these songs ended up in low-budget films including What's Good For the Goose (1969), Haunted House of Horror (1969),The Monster Club (1981) and a couple of softcore porn films. Not intended for official release, these songs were later compiled on a number of records and released under the alias Electric Banana: Electric Banana (1967), More Electric Banana (1968), Even More Electric Banana (1969), Hot Licks (1970), and Return of the Electric Banana (1978). The initial releases featured one side of vocal and one side of instrumental tracks. Subsequent releases of these albums generally keep the true identity of the band secret.

Soundtracks / live albums

References

External links

Category:English rock music groups Category:Musical groups from London Category:Musical groups established in 1963 Category:1960s music groups Category:1970s music groups Category:1980s music groups Category:1990s music groups Category:2000s music groups Category:Pre-punk groups

Coming to prominence in the late 1970s with The Soft Boys, Hitchcock afterward launched a prolific solo career. Hitchcock's musical and lyrical styles have been influenced by the likes of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Syd Barrett. Hitchcock's lyrics tend to include surrealism, comedic elements, characterisations of English eccentrics, and melancholy depictions of everyday life. His themes include the eternal contingencies of existence — namely: death, sex, and eating. (Recognising these themes, he released an EP in 2007 called Sex, Food, Death and Tarantulas.)

He was signed to two major American labels (A&M; Records, then Warner Brothers) over the course of the 1980s and '90s, but mainstream success has been limited. Still, he has maintained a loyal cult following and has often earned strong critical reviews over a steady stream of album releases and live performances.

Biography

Early life and recording career

1980s

1990s

2000s

During a short tour with Grant-Lee Phillips of Grant Lee Buffalo, Hitchcock co-produced and co-starred in a concert film of the tour shot in Seattle titled Elixirs & Remedies.

The 2002 double album Robyn Sings comprised cover versions of Bob Dylan songs, including a live re-creation (performed in 1996) of Dylan's so-called Live at the Royal Albert Hall 1966 concert. Hitchcock celebrated his 50th birthday in 2003 with a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London at which his then-new solo acoustic album Luxor was given away as a gift to all those attending, and an original poem of his was read by actor Alan Rickman. He continued collaborating with a series of different musicians, as on the album Spooked, which was recorded with country/folk duo (and longtime Hitchcock fans) Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. In 2006 Olé! Tarantula was released with The Venus 3, a band which consisted of longtime friends and collaborators R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Young Fresh Fellows' frontman Scott McCaughey, as well as Ministry's Bill Rieflin (by then also R.E.M.'s full-time drummer). The song "'Cause It's Love (Saint Parallelogram)" was written with Andy Partridge of XTC.

In 2007, he was the subject of a documentary directed by John Edginton, shown on the U.S. Sundance Channel and in the UK on BBC Four (and later released on DVD). "Food, sex and death are all corridors to life if you like. You need sex to get you here, you need food to keep you here and you need death to get you out and they’re the entry and exit signs."

Late in 2007, Hitchcock's music was again re-packaged and re-released in the U.S., as Yep Roc Records began an extensive reissue campaign with three early solo releases and a double-CD compilation of rarities, which would be available separately or as part of a new boxed set release, I Wanna Go Backwards.

In 2008, that boxed set was followed up with Luminous Groove, a boxed set of three early Egyptians releases and two further discs of rarities. In 2009, the electro-pop artist and remixer Pocket released an EP featuring Hitchcock called "Surround Him With Love", while Hitchcock released an entirely separate new album, Goodnight Oslo, with the Venus 3. At the end of the year, a live album called I Often Dream Of Trains In New York documented the late-2008 onstage re-creation of his acclaimed 1984 acoustic album (a limited-edition deluxe version also included the materials to construct a kind of moving-image generator called a phenokistoscope).

2010s

Interests

Hitchcock collaborated with director Jonathan Demme in 1998 for a live concert and film Storefront Hitchcock, and later appeared in Demme's 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, in which he played double agent Laurent Tokar. He also appeared in Demme's Rachel Getting Married in 2008, singing and playing guitar in the wedding-party band.

In September 2008 Hitchcock joined the Disko Bay Cape Farewell expedition to the West Coast of Greenland. Cape Farewell is a UK based arts organisation that brings artists, scientists and communicators together to instigate a cultural response to climate change. Other voyagers on the trip included musicians Jarvis Cocker, KT Tunstall and Martha Wainwright.

Personal

Album discography

Original studio albums

Compilations of rarities, demos, alternate takes and out-takes

Live albums

Best-of compilations

Compilation appearances

References

Further reading

External links

Category:1953 births Category:Alternative rock musicians Category:English male singers Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English songwriters Category:K Records artists Category:Living people Category:Old Wykehamists Category:Music from Cambridge

Early life

On 12 March 2007, Driver made her return to television starring alongside Eddie Izzard on the FX Network show The Riches, a series about a family of Travellers living in an upscale gated community in the suburbs. She was nominated for the 2007 Emmy Award as Best Actress in a Dramatic Series.

On 12 November 2009, it was announced that Driver would guest-star in a January 2010 episode of Modern Family. Her role was that of Claire's friend and former co-worker whom she hasn't seen in years. At the end of 2009, Driver began filming a part in the Tiger Aspect television serial The Deep, to be shown on BBC One in 2010.

In 2010, Driver's movie Motherhood set a record for the biggest bomb in British cinema history garnering just £88 on 11 tickets on opening weekend. In the United States Motherhood didn't fare much better earning just $93,388 in three weeks of release.

Music career

She began a low-profile return to music in 2000; the following year, she signed with EMI and Rounder Records and performed at SXSW. Canadian music producer Colin Craig assisted in the eventual release of Everything I've Got in My Pocket, which reached No. 34 in the UK, and a second single, "Invisible Girl" peaking at No. 68. The album was backed by a group including members of the Wallflowers and Pete Yorn's band. Driver wrote 10 of the 11 songs on the album and also covered "Hungry Heart" from Bruce Springsteen's The River. In 2004, Driver was the support act for the Finn Brothers on the UK portion of their world tour.

In 2004, Driver played Carlotta Giudicelli in Joel Schumacher's film of The Phantom of the Opera. Because of the vocal requirements of the role, Driver was the sole cast member to have her voice dubbed. However, she did lend her own voice to Learn to be Lonely, a song written by Andrew Lloyd Webber specifically for the film version of his musical (it plays over the closing credits of the movie). Driver released her second album entitled Seastories on 17 July 2007. The 12-track set is produced by Marc "Doc" Dauer, who also produced Everything I've Got in My Pocket. Ryan Adams and his band The Cardinals and Liz Phair are among the list of collaborators for the album.

Personal life

Filmography

Films

Television series

Other

Discography

Albums

Singles

References

External links

Category:1970 births Category:Living people Category:People from Finsbury Park Category:English people of Welsh descent Category:Old Bedalians Category:Alumni of the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art Category:English female singers Category:English film actors Category:English songwriters Category:English television actors Category:Actors from London Category:English expatriates in the United States

During the late 1950s and 1960s she was a lyricist for motion picture songs, and with her first husband André Previn received several Academy Award nominations. In the 1970s, after their divorce, she released six albums of original songs and an acclaimed live album. Dory Previn's lyrics from this period are characterised by their originality, their irony, and their honesty in dealing with her troubled personal life, as well as more generally about relationships, sexuality, religion and psychology. She has continued to work since then as a writer of song lyrics and prose.

Life and career

Early years

After high school, Dory attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for a year before having to leave due to financial difficulties. She then toured as a chorus line dancer and singer, and started to write songs. She later wrote:- "I have been an actress, model, and chorus girl. I've worked at odd jobs - secretary, salesgirl, accounting in a filling station, waitress - anything to keep me going while I pursued my writing." At this time, she entered a brief first marriage which ended in divorce soon after.

Lyricist and marriage, 1958-1969

She and Previn married in 1959. The couple collaborated on a number of songs used in motion pictures, including "The Faraway Part Of Town" sung in the film Pepe by Judy Garland, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song in 1960. In 1961 they wrote "One, Two, Three Waltz" for the movie One, Two, Three, and in 1962 wrote "A Second Chance" for the movie Two For The Seesaw, which won them a second Oscar nomination. They also wrote non-movie songs recorded by Doris Day, Jack Jones, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis Jr., and others. In 1964, Dory Previn collaborated with Harold Arlen on "So Long, Big Time!," which was recorded by Tony Bennett. Later in 1966, the song was covered by Carola, accompanied by Heikki Sarmanto Trio.

By the mid-1960s, André Previn had become a classical music conductor, touring worldwide. Dory had a morbid fear of air travel and did not join him. In 1965 Dory Previn's mental health deteriorated, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was briefly institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital. However, she continued to write with her husband, on songs including "You're Gonna Hear From Me" recorded by Frank Sinatra, and began to use the name Dory Previn professionally. In 1967, they wrote five songs for the movie Valley of the Dolls. The soundtrack album spent six months in the charts, and Dionne Warwick had a pop hit with her version of the theme song. In 1968, Dory wrote a new English libretto for Mozart’s opera The Impresario. The following year she won a third Oscar nomination for "Come Saturday Morning", with music by Fred Karlin, from the movie The Sterile Cuckoo. A hit version was recorded by The Sandpipers.

In 1968 André Previn had fully transitioned from composing film scores to conducting symphony orchestras, most notably the London Symphony Orchestra. While in London he began an affair with the, then 24-year-old, actress Mia Farrow who was working on the film A Dandy in Aspic. In the spring of 1969 Dory discovered that Farrow had become pregnant, compelling her to separate from her husband. Their divorce became final in July 1970 - André Previn subsequently married Farrow . This betrayal led to Dory being institutionalised again, where she was treated with Electroconvulsive therapy. The treatment seemed to change her outlook as a songwriter, making her more introspective. She subsequently expressed her feelings regarding Farrow, and the end of her marriage in the song "Beware of Young Girls", featured on her 1970 album On My Way to Where, featuring some acerbic, amusing and insightful lyrics, as can be seen in the excerpts below:

"Beware of young girls who come to your door, Wistful and pale, twenty and four, Delivering daises with delicate hands. Beware of young girls, too often they crave, To cry at a wedding... And dance on a grave."

"She was my friend, my friend, my friend. She was invited to my house, Oh yes she was, And although she knew my love was true, and no ordinary thing, She admired my wedding ring, she admired my wedding ring."

"We were friends, oh yes we were, And she just took him from my life, oh yes she did. So young and vain, she brought me pain, but I'm wise enough to say, She will leave him one thoughtless day, she'll just leave him and go away, Oh yes."

Singer-songwriter, 1970-1980

Her second album of this period, Mythical Kings and Iguanas, released in 1971, was even more successful. United Artists Records then took over Mediarts and released her third album, Reflections in a Mud Puddle. The album was voted one of the best albums of 1972 by Newsweek magazine, and was included in the New York Times critics' choice as one of the outstanding singer-songwriter albums of the 1970s. "Taps, Tremors and Time-Steps: One Last Dance for my Father," the second side of Reflections In a Mud Puddle, is a personal account of the deterioration of their relationship and her anguish at their differences remaining unresolved at the time of her father's death. In 1972 she released Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign, a thematic album about Hollywood misfits—Mary C. Brown, an actress who kills herself jumping from Hollywood's letter ´H´, apparently based upon real-life Peg Entwistle--whose songs were intended for a musical revue that ran briefly in Los Angeles. Previn teamed up with producer Zev Bufman to stage it on Broadway, but the previews were poor and the show was cancelled before it opened.

Her albums maintained a balance of intensely personal lyrics and wider commentary— "A Stone for Bessie Smith" is about the premature death of singer Janis Joplin, while "Doppelgänger" examines the latent savagery of humanity. Self-conscious spirituality at the expense of the tangible is criticised in "Mythical Kings and Iguanas", while songs dealing with emotionally frail characters appear as "Lady With the Braid", "Lemon-Haired Ladies", and "The Altruist and the Needy Case". Feminist issues and dilemmas are explored in "Brando" and "The Owl and the Pussycat", while the male ego is attacked with wit and irony in "Michael, Michael", "Don't Put Him Down", and "That Perfect Man". In 1973, her screenplay Third Girl From The Left was filmed and broadcast as a TV movie. She also undertook some public performances that year, including a concert in New York on April 18, 1973. This was recorded and released later as a double LP, Live At Carnegie Hall, which featured in a book of the two hundred best rock albums. She also continued to collaborate on music for movies and TV. Her last film credit was the title song for Last Tango in Paris (1973), with music by Gato Barbieri.

She then switched to Warner Bros. Records, and released the album Dory Previn in 1974, followed by We're Children of Coincidence and Harpo Marx in 1976. Overcoming her fear of flying, she toured in Europe in the late 1970s, and in 1980 performed in a musical revue of her songs, Children Of Coincidence, in Dublin.

She withdrew from music for a period, and wrote two autobiographies, Midnight Baby: an Autobiography (1976, ISBN 0-02-299000-4) and Bogtrotter: An Autobiography with Lyrics (1980, ISBN 0-385-14708-2). The latter title refers to her Irish heritage: "bogtrotter" is a derogatory term for an Irish person. She also wrote Schizo-phren, a one-woman play with songs.

Later life

In 1984 she married actor and artist Joby Baker. She performed in London in 1986, and also wrote a stage work, The Flight Of The Gooney Bird. She last appeared in concert in 1988, in Dublin and at the Donmar Warehouse in London. As a writer, her short stories have appeared in several publications, and she has also worked on a novel, Word-Play with an Invisible Relative. She has also lectured on lyric writing, recording, and writing autobiographies at various American universities. Baker provided illustrations for The Dory Previn Songbook, published in 1995, which contains songs from her period with United Artists.

In 1997 she collaborated with André again, to produce a piece for soprano and ensemble entitled The Magic Number. This was first performed by the New York Philharmonic, with André Previn as conductor and Sylvia McNair performing the soprano part. A piano reduction was published by G. Schirmer, Inc (ISBN 0-7935-8803-0).

In 2002 Dory Previn released a royalty-free recording available via the internet entitled Planet Blue. This contains a mixture of recent and previously unreleased material dealing with environmental degradation and the threat of nuclear disaster.

At the time of writing, she continues to work, in spite of having suffered several strokes, which have affected her eyesight. She continues to live in Massachusetts with her husband Joby Baker.

A new compilation of her early 1970s work, entitled The Art of Dory Previn, was released by EMI on January 21, 2008.

Tributes

Discography

Original albums

Download only

Compilation albums

References

External links

Category:1929 births Category:Living people Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American lyricists Category:People from Union County, New Jersey

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.

Childhood (1928–48)

In third grade, Warhol had chorea, the nervous system disease that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever and causes skin pigmentation blotchiness. He became a hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bed-ridden as a child, he became an outcast at school and bonded with his mother. At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences. When Warhol was 13, his father died in an accident.

Commercial art (1949–61)

Fine art (1962–67)

Among the imagery tackled by Warhol were dollar bills, celebrities and brand name products. He also used as imagery for his paintings newspaper headlines or photographs of mushroom clouds, electric chairs, and police dogs attacking civil rights protesters. Warhol also used Coca Cola bottles as subject matter for paintings. He had this to say about Coca Cola:

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New York's Museum of Modern Art hosted a Symposium on pop art in December 1962 during which artists like Warhol were attacked for "capitulating" to consumerism. Critics were scandalized by Warhol's open embrace of market culture. This symposium set the tone for Warhol's reception. Throughout the decade it became more and more clear that there had been a profound change in the culture of the art world, and that Warhol was at the center of that shift.

A pivotal event was the 1964 exhibit The American Supermarket, a show held in Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery. The show was presented as a typical U.S. small supermarket environment, except that everything in it – from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc. – was created by six prominent pop artists of the time, among them the controversial (and like-minded) Billy Apple, Mary Inman, and Robert Watts. Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for $6. The exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the perennial question of what art is (or of what is art and what is not).

As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity. Collaboration would remain a defining (and controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career; in the 1960s, however, this was particularly true. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with producing silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at "The Factory," Warhol's aluminum foil-and-silver-paint-lined studio on 47th Street (later moved to Broadway). Other members of Warhol's Factory crowd included Freddie Herko, Ondine, Ronald Tavel, Mary Woronov, Billy Name, and Brigid Berlin (from whom he apparently got the idea to tape-record his phone conversations).

During the '60s, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation "Superstars", including Nico, Joe Dallesandro, Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet, Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling. These people all participated in the Factory films, and some – like Berlin – remained friends with Warhol until his death. Important figures in the New York underground art/cinema world, such as writer John Giorno and film-maker Jack Smith, also appear in Warhol films of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range of artistic scenes during this time.

Attempted murder (1968)

Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital later the same day. Warhol however, was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived (surgeons opened his chest and massaged his heart to help stimulate its movement again). He suffered physical effects for the rest of his life. The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art.

Solanas was arrested the day after the assault. By way of explanation, she said that Warhol "had too much control over my life." She was eventually sentenced to three years under the control of the Department of Corrections. After the shooting, the Factory scene became much more tightly controlled, and for many the "Factory 60s" ended.

1970s

Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s, the 1970s were a much quieter decade, as Warhol became more entrepreneurial. According to Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions– including Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his wife Empress Farah Pahlavi, his sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, and Brigitte Bardot. Warhol's famous portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was created in 1973. He also founded, with Gerard Malanga, Interview magazine, and published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975). An idea expressed in the book: "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art."

Warhol used to socialize at various nightspots in New York City, including Max's Kansas City; and, later in the '70s, Studio 54. He was generally regarded as quiet, shy, and a meticulous observer. Art critic Robert Hughes called him "the white mole of Union Square."

1980s

During this time Warhol created the Michael Jackson painting signifying his success attributed to his best-selling album Thriller.

By this period, Warhol was being criticized for becoming merely a "business artist". In 1979, reviewers disliked his exhibits of portraits of 1970s personalities and celebrities, calling them superficial, facile and commercial, with no depth or indication of the significance of the subjects. They also criticized his 1980 exhibit of 10 portraits at the Jewish Museum in New York, entitled Jewish Geniuses, which Warhol – who was uninterested in Judaism and Jews – had described in his diary as "They're going to sell."

Death

Warhol's body was taken back to Pittsburgh by his brothers for burial. The wake was at Thomas P. Kunsak Funeral Home and was an open-coffin ceremony. The coffin was a solid bronze casket with gold plated rails and white upholstery. Warhol was dressed in a black cashmere suit, a paisley tie, a platinum wig, and sunglasses. He was posed holding a small prayer book and a red rose. The funeral liturgy was held at the Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church on Pittsburgh's North Side. The eulogy was given by Monsignor Peter Tay. Yoko Ono also made an appearance. The coffin was covered with white roses and asparagus ferns. After the liturgy, the coffin was driven to St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, a south suburb of Pittsburgh. , Slovakia.|left]] At the grave, the priest said a brief prayer and sprinkled holy water on the casket. Before the coffin was lowered, Paige Powell dropped a copy of Interview magazine, an Interview t-shirt, and a bottle of the Estee Lauder perfume "Beautiful" into the grave. Warhol was buried next to his mother and father. A memorial service was held in Manhattan for Warhol on April 1, 1987, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.

Warhol's will dictated that his entire estate – with the exception of a few modest legacies to family members – would go to create a foundation dedicated to the "advancement of the visual arts". Warhol had so many possessions that it took Sotheby's nine days to auction his estate after his death; the auction grossed more than US$20 million.

In 1987, in accordance with Warhol's will, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts began. The Foundation serves as the official Estate of Andy Warhol, but also has a mission "to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process" and is "focused primarily on supporting work of a challenging and often experimental nature."

The Artists Rights Society is the U.S. copyright representative for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for all Warhol works with the exception of Warhol film stills. The U.S. copyright representative for Warhol film stills is the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Additionally, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has agreements in place for its image archive. All digital images of Warhol are exclusively managed by Corbis, while all transparency images of Warhol are managed by Art Resource.

The Andy Warhol Foundation released its 20th Anniversary Annual Report as a three-volume set in 2007: Vol. I, 1987–2007; Vol. II, Grants & Exhibitions; and Vol. III, Legacy Program. The Foundation remains one of the largest grant-giving organizations for the visual arts in the U.S.

Works

Paintings

By the beginning of the 1960s, Warhol had become a very successful commercial illustrator. His detailed and elegant drawings for I. Miller shoes were particularly popular. They consisted mainly of "blotted ink" drawings (or monoprints), a technique which he applied in much of his early art. Although many artists of this period worked in commercial art, most did so discreetly. Warhol was so successful, however, that his profile as an illustrator seemed to undermine his efforts to be taken seriously as an artist.

Pop art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the artist's palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract expressionists (such as Willem de Kooning). Warhol's first pop art paintings were displayed in April 1961, serving as the backdrop for New York Department Store Bronwit Teller's window display. This was the same stage his Pop Art contemporaries Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg had also once graced. Eventually, Warhol pared his image vocabulary down to the icon itself – to brand names, celebrities, dollar signs – and removed all traces of the artist's "hand" in the production of his paintings.

To him, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter. Cartoons were already being used by Lichtenstein, typography by Jasper Johns, and so on; Warhol wanted a distinguishing subject. His friends suggested he should paint the things he loved the most. It was the gallerist Muriel Latow who came up with the ideas for both the soup cans and Warhol's dollar paintings. On 23 November 1961 Warhol wrote Latow a check for $50 which, according to the 2009 Warhol biography, Pop, The Genius of Warhol, was payment for coming up with the idea of the soup cans as subject matter. For his first major exhibition Warhol painted his famous cans of Campbell's Soup, which he claimed to have had for lunch for most of his life. The work sold for $10,000 at an auction on November 17, 1971, at Sotheby's New York – a minimal amount for the artist whose paintings sell for over $6 million more recently.

He loved celebrities, so he painted them as well. From these beginnings he developed his later style and subjects. Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature style, slowly eliminating the hand-made from the artistic process. Warhol frequently used silk-screening; his later drawings were traced from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.

In 1979, Warhol was commissioned by BMW to paint a Group 4 race version of the then elite supercar BMW M1 for the fourth installment in the BMW Art Car Project. Unlike the three artists before him, Warhol declined the use of a small scale practice model, instead opting to immediately paint directly onto the full scale automobile. It was indicated that Warhol spent only a total of 23 minutes to paint the entire car.

Warhol produced both comic and serious works; his subject could be a soup can or an electric chair. Warhol used the same techniques– silkscreens, reproduced serially, and often painted with bright colors – whether he painted celebrities, everyday objects, or images of suicide, car crashes, and disasters, as in the 1962–63 Death and Disaster series. The Death and Disaster paintings included Red Car Crash, Purple Jumping Man, and Orange Disaster.

The unifying element in Warhol's work is his deadpan Keatonesque style – artistically and personally affectless. This was mirrored by Warhol's own demeanor, as he often played "dumb" to the media, and refused to explain his work. The artist was famous for having said that all you need to know about him and his works is already there, "Just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it." His Rorschach inkblots are intended as pop comments on art and what art could be. His cow wallpaper (literally, wallpaper with a cow motif) and his oxidation paintings (canvases prepared with copper paint that was then oxidized with urine) are also noteworthy in this context. Equally noteworthy is the way these works – and their means of production – mirrored the atmosphere at Andy's New York "Factory". Biographer Bob Colacello provides some details on Andy's "piss paintings":

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Warhol's first portrait of Basquiat (1982) is a black photosilkscreen over an oxidized copper "piss painting".

After many years of silkscreen, oxidation, photography, etc., Warhol returned to painting with a brush in hand in a series of over 50 large collaborative works done with Jean-Michel Basquiat between 1984 and 1986. Despite negative criticism when these were first shown, Warhol called some of them "masterpieces," and they were influential for his later work.

The influence of the large collaborations with Basquiat can be seen in Warhol's The Last Supper cycle, his last and possibly his largest series, seen by some as "arguably his greatest," but by others as “wishy-washy, religiose” and “spiritless." It is also the largest series of religious-themed works by any U.S. artist.

Films

Batman Dracula is a 1964 film that was produced and directed by Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics. It was screened only at his art exhibits. A fan of the Batman series, Warhol's movie was an "homage" to the series, and is considered the first appearance of a blatantly campy Batman. The film was until recently thought to have been lost, until scenes from the picture were shown at some length in the 2006 documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis.

Warhol's 1965 film Vinyl is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' popular dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange. Others record improvised encounters between Factory regulars such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico, and Jackie Curtis. Legendary underground artist Jack Smith appears in the film Camp.

His most popular and critically successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was highly innovative in that it consisted of two 16 mm-films being projected simultaneously, with two different stories being shown in tandem. From the projection booth, the sound would be raised for one film to elucidate that "story" while it was lowered for the other. The multiplication of images evoked Warhol's seminal silk-screen works of the early 1960s.

Other important films include Bike Boy, My Hustler, and Lonesome Cowboys, a raunchy pseudo-western. These and other titles document gay underground and camp culture, and continue to feature prominently in scholarship about sexuality and art. Blue Movie – a film in which Warhol superstar Viva makes love and fools around in bed with a man for 33 minutes of the film's playing-time – was Warhol's last film as director. The film was at the time scandalous for its frank approach to a sexual encounter. For many years Viva refused to allow it to be screened. It was publicly screened in New York in 2005 for the first time in over thirty years.

After his June 3, 1968, shooting, a reclusive Warhol relinquished his personal involvement in filmmaking. His acolyte and assistant director, Paul Morrissey, took over the film-making chores for the Factory collective, steering Warhol-branded cinema towards more mainstream, narrative-based, B-movie exploitation fare with Flesh, Trash, and Heat. All of these films, including the later Andy Warhol's Dracula and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, were far more mainstream than anything Warhol as a director had attempted. These latter "Warhol" films starred Joe Dallesandro – more of a Morrissey star than a true Warhol superstar.

In the early '70s, most of the films directed by Warhol were pulled out of circulation by Warhol and the people around him who ran his business. After Warhol's death, the films were slowly restored by the Whitney Museum and are occasionally projected at museums and film festivals. Few of the Warhol-directed films are available on video or DVD.

Factory in New York

Filmography

Music

Warhol designed many album covers for various artists starting with the photographic cover of John Wallowitch's debut album, This Is John Wallowitch!!! (1964). He designed the cover art for the Rolling Stones albums Sticky Fingers (1971) and Love You Live (1977), and the John Cale albums The Academy In Peril (1972) and Honi Soit in 1981. In 1975, Warhol was commissioned to do several portraits of Mick Jagger, and in 1982 he designed the album cover for the Diana Ross album Silk Electric. One of his last works was a portrait of Aretha Franklin for the cover of her 1986 gold album Aretha, which was done in the style of the Reigning Queens series he had completed the year before.

Warhol strongly influenced the New Wave/punk rock band Devo, as well as David Bowie. Bowie recorded a song called "Andy Warhol" for his 1971 album Hunky Dory. Lou Reed wrote the song "Andy's Chest", about Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Warhol, in 1968. He recorded it with the Velvet Underground, and this version was released on the VU album in 1985.

Books and print

The first of several bound self-published books by Warhol was 25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy, printed in 1954 by Seymour Berlin on Arches brand watermarked paper using his blotted line technique for the lithographs. The original edition was limited to 190 numbered, hand colored copies, using Dr. Martin's ink washes. Most of these were given by Warhol as gifts to clients and friends. Copy #4, inscribed "Jerry" on the front cover and given to Geraldine Stutz, was used for a facsimile printing in 1987 and the original was auctioned in May 2006 for US $35,000 by Doyle New York.

Other self-published books by Warhol include:

After gaining fame, Warhol "wrote" several books that were commercially published: a, A Novel (1968, ISBN 0-8021-3553-6) is a literal transcription– containing spelling errors and phonetically written background noise and mumbling– of audio recordings of Ondine and several of Andy Warhol's friends hanging out at the Factory, talking, going out. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again) (1975, ISBN 0-15-671720-4)– according to Pat Hackett's introduction to The Andy Warhol Diaries, Pat Hackett did the transcriptions and text for the book based on daily phone conversations, sometimes (when Warhol was traveling) using audio cassettes that Andy Warhol gave her. Said cassettes contained conversations with Brigid Berlin (also known as Brigid Polk) and former Interview magazine editor Bob Colacello.

Warhol created the fashion magazine Interview that is still published today. The loopy title script on the cover is thought to be either his own handwriting or that of his mother, Julia Warhola, who would often do text work for his early commercial pieces.

Other media

Producer and product

He founded the gossip magazine Interview, a stage for celebrities he "endorsed" and a business staffed by his friends. He collaborated with others on all of his books (some of which were written with Pat Hackett.) He adopted the young painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the band The Velvet Underground, presenting them to the public as his latest interest, and collaborating with them. One might even say that he produced people (as in the Warholian "Superstar" and the Warholian portrait). He endorsed products, appeared in commercials, and made frequent celebrity guest appearances on television shows and in films (he appeared in everything from Love Boat to Saturday Night Live and the Richard Pryor movie, Dynamite Chicken).

In this respect Warhol was a fan of "Art Business" and "Business Art"– he, in fact, wrote about his interest in thinking about art as business in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again.

Personal life

Sexuality

Religious beliefs

Movies about Warhol

on the set of 1979's Cocaine Cowboys, in which Warhol appeared as himself]]

In 1979, Warhol appeared as himself in the film Cocaine Cowboys.

After his passing, Warhol was portrayed by Crispin Glover in Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991), by David Bowie in Basquiat, a film by Julian Schnabel, and by Jared Harris in the film I Shot Andy Warhol directed by Mary Harron (1996). Warhol appears as a character in Michael Daugherty's 1997 opera Jackie O. Actor Mark Bringleson makes a brief cameo as Warhol in (1997). Many films by avant-garde cineast Jonas Mekas have caught the moments of Andy's life. Sean Gregory Sullivan depicted Warhol in the 1998 film 54. Guy Pearce portrayed Warhol in the 2007 film, Factory Girl, about Edie Sedgwick's life. Actor Greg Travis portrays Warhol in a brief scene from the 2009 film Watchmen.

Gus Van Sant was planning a version of Warhol's life with River Phoenix in the lead role just before Phoenix's death in 1993.

;Documentaries The 2001 documentary, Absolut Warhola was produced by Polish director Stanislaw Mucha, featuring Warhol's parents' family and hometown in Slovakia. is a reverential four-hour 2006 movie by Ric Burns. Andy Warhol: Double Denied is a 52 minute movie by lan Yentob about the difficulties in authenticating Warhol's work.

See also

References

Further reading

External links

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Short description

In the novels his name is Savely – a rare Russian name, which was changed to relatively sounding, more common and catchy. He appeared in more than twenty novels, all of them became a bestsellers.

Fictional character biography

Complicated tangle, eh? And there is no wonder that KGB, Russian mob and Mujahideen wants him dead or alive. Finally he came back in the USSR, but now it's not the same Country he had left a years ago. New trends, new ideas, new liberties are in the air.

Meaning of the "30th"

Victor Dotsenko "Terminate the Thirtieth!":

Other facts

See also

Further reading

References

Category:Fictional sergeants Category:Fictional Spetsnaz personnel Category:Fictional war veterans Category:Fictional mercenaries Category:Fictional private military members Category:Characters in Russian novels of the 20th century Category:Russian characters in written fiction