Name	Art rock
Bgcolor	crimson
Color	white
Stylistic origins	Rock, avant-garde, experimental rock, baroque pop, psychedelic rock
Cultural origins	Early 1960s United Kingdom
Instruments	Keyboards, guitar, bass, drums
Popularity	Some bands had mainstream success in 1970s; since then, it has a relatively small fan base.
Derivatives	Progressive rock, glam rock, post-punk
Regional scenes	Largely global, England – Scotland – Wales – Ireland – USA – Canada – Sweden – Japan – Czech Republic
Other topics	Sunshine pop – Progressive rock

Art rock is a term describing a subgenre of rock music that tends to have "experimental or avant-garde influences" and emphasizes "novel sonic texture." Art rock is an "intrinsically album-based" form, which takes "advantage of the format's capacity for longer, more complex compositions and extended instrumental explorations."

Relationship with progressive rock

The concept of "art rock" has also sometimes been used to refer to the "progressive rock" bands which became popular in the 1970s. Allmusic states that "Progressive rock and art rock are two almost interchangeable terms describing a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." Bruce Eder's essay The Early History of Art-Rock/Prog Rock states that "'progressive rock,' also sometimes known as 'art rock,' or 'classical rock'" is music in which the "bands [are] playing suites, not songs; borrowing riffs from Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner instead of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley; and using language closer to William Blake or T. S. Eliot than to Carl Perkins or Willie Dixon." The Guide to the Progressive Rock Genres lists "art rock" under the subheading "Forms Tangential and Peripheral to Symphonic Rock/Progressive Rock." The guide states that "art rock" is "another term often used interchangeably with progressive rock, [which] implies rock with an exploratory tendency." The guide also gives another definition of "art rock", which "describes music of a more mainstream compositional nature, tending to experimentation within this framework", such as "Early" Roxy Music, David Bowie, Brian Eno's 70s rock music, and Be-Bop Deluxe.

Connolly and Company argue that the "creation of the 'art rock' sub-genre, whose members were identified by music played with artistic ideals (e.g., Roxy Music, 10cc)... was in many ways a response to prog rock’s long-winded concepts, an attempt to condense progressive rock’s ideas into shorter, self-standing songs." He argues that "Art rock’s lifespan was brief, generally contained to the ‘70s."

Art rock may be considered "arty" through incorporating some elements of classical "art" music or literature, or simply through eclecticism. Examples of the former include Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues, The Who, Pink Floyd, The Nice, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, David Bowie, The Velvet Underground, Kate Bush, Beach Boys, The Beatles, and Love (Forever Changes) and examples of the latter include Peter Hammill, Roxy Music, Genesis, Doctors of Madness, and Yes.

History

1960s–1970s

Music critic George Graham argues that "... the so-called Art Rock scene arose" in the 1960s, "when many artists were attempting to broaden the boundaries of rock." He claims that art rock "was inspired by the classically-influenced arrangements and the elaborate production of the Beatles Sgt. Peppers (1967) period" and states that the "style had its heyday in the 1970s with huge commercial success by Yes, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and later Genesis."

However, Graham notes that art rock "quickly faded when punk rock and then so-called alternative rock arose at the end of that decade, exactly as a reaction to the sophistication, and in many cases, pretense of big, elaborate rock productions, be they art rock or slickly-produced pop singers." Graham claims that since the late 1970s, "art rock has remained at the fringes and become one of many venerable styles...that attracts small numbers of avid fans, and continues to be perpetuated by a combination of some of the original artists and new generations of players." from Quicksilver Messenger Service]]

In the UK in 1966, a Scottish band called 1-2-3, later renamed Clouds, began experimenting with song structures, improvisation, and multi-layered arrangements which led directly to later bands like Yes, King Crimson, and The Nice.. In the US, a number of late-1960s bands experimented with "long compositions", with each band "trying to out-psychedelic the other" with unusual sonic experiments. The Golden Age Of Art Rock lectures state that the "piece that caused the explosion of Art Rock more than any other, starting in 1968" was Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". In response, many other bands tried to emulate this art rock style, such as "Jefferson Airplane, The Steve Miller Band, The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, H.P. Lovecraft and It's A Beautiful Day." The Steve Miller Band "had quite a lot of Art Rock in the early albums. The lecture argues that the "two main long pieces" by The Doors ("The End" and "When The Music's Over") are "good examples of Art Rock."

Anderson provides an example of a tenuous definition because she was also an artist in mediums outside of music, exhibiting her artwork and music primarily in art museums for a decade prior to making any concert tours, singles or albums. While the term "art rock" may suggest a crossover with other forms of art, and while a large number of "art rock" musicians may also be visual or performance artists, Anderson "went pop" only after establishing herself primarily in the art scene, and as such she was more of an outsider to the rock music world than is typical of "art rock" musicians. For instance, Brian Eno also studied art and participated in the avant garde art scene, but he first became known as the keyboard player for Roxy Music.

2000s

In 2000, British rock group Radiohead abandoned their traditional alternative rock sound and instead made an electronic experimental album, Kid A. This is considered to be one of the most significant moves in art rock. In 2004, the phrase "art rock" was used by British writers from music publications such as NME to describe a group of new, mostly "indie" bands influenced by the 1970s/1980s work of artists including David Bowie, David Byrne, Tom Verlaine, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, and Brian Eno, and by the UK post punk scene in general. While other art rock bands such as Deerhoof generally eschew self-conscious descriptions as "art rock", there is also a continuing subcultural movement of underground, sometimes highly uncommercial music with original roots in punk rock, post punk or the radical avant-garde whose style or philosophy would fall under common definitions of "art rock". Some of these bands may also be described as experimental rock, while the even more abrasive and abstract acts such as Wolf Eyes and Merzbow may be described as noise music.

See also

Art punk

Notes

References

Rockwell, John. "Art Rock" in Henke, James et al. (Eds.) (1992). The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll: The Definitive History of the Most Important Artists and Their Music. ISBN 0-679-73728-6.

Stuessy, Joe. Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development, 5th ed., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003. ISBN 0-13-099370-0

Category:Rock music genres

Name	Andy Warhol
Caption	Warhol in 1963
Birthname	Andrew Warhola
Birthdate	August 06, 1928
Birth place	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Deathdate	February 22, 1987
Deathplace	New York City, U.S.
Nationality	American
Field	Painting, Cinema
Training	Carnegie Mellon University
Movement	Pop art
Works	Chelsea Girls (1966 film)Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966 event)Campbell's Soup Cans (1962 painting)

Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.

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)

neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]] Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 6, 1928. He was the fourth child of Andrij Warhola (died 1942) and Julia (née Zavacka, 1892–1972), whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their move to the U.S. His parents were working-class Rusyns (or Lemkos) emigrants from Mikó (now called Miková), located in today’s northeastern Slovakia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Warhol's father immigrated to the US in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The family was Byzantine Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol had two older brothers - Pavol (Paul), the oldest, was born in Slovakia; Ján was born in Pittsburgh. Pavol's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's book illustrator.

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)

Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (now Carnegie Mellon University). In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a career in magazine illustration and advertising. During the 1950s, he gained fame for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements. These were done in a loose, blotted-ink style, and figured in some of his earliest showings at the Bodley Gallery in New York. With the concurrent rapid expansion of the record industry and the introduction of the vinyl record, Hi-Fi, and stereophonic recordings, RCA Records hired Warhol, along with another freelance artist, Sid Maurer, to design album covers and promotional materials.

Fine art (1962–67)

His first one-man art-gallery exhibition as a fine artist was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles. The exhibition marked the West Coast debut of pop art. Andy Warhol's first New York solo pop exhibit was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery November 6–24, 1962. The exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, Sleep, in 1963. (right) talking on the S.S. France, 1967; in the background: Paul Morrissey.]] It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles, as well as paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor. He founded "The Factory," his studio during these years, and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. He began producing prints using the silkscreen method His work became popular and controversial.

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)

On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic and curator Mario Amaya at Warhol's studio. Before the shooting, Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene. She authored the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a separatist feminist attack on patriarchy. Solanas appears in the 1968 Warhol film I, a Man. Earlier on the day of the attack, Solanas had been turned away from the Factory after asking for the return of a script she had given to Warhol. The script, apparently, had been misplaced.

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

in 1977]]

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

Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the "bull market" of '80s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi.

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 died in New York City at 6:32 a.m. on February 22, 1987. According to news reports, he had been making good recovery from a routine gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia. Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors. His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication.

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

Warhol worked across a wide range of media – painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture. In addition, he was a highly prolific filmmaker. Between 1963 and 1968, he made more than 60 films, plus some 500 short black-and-white "screen test" portraits of Factory visitors. One of his most famous films, Sleep, monitors poet John Giorno sleeping for six hours. The 35-minute film Blow Job is one continuous shot of the face of DeVeren Bookwalter supposedly receiving oral sex from filmmaker Willard Maas, although the camera never tilts down to see this. Another, Empire (1964), consists of eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building in New York City at dusk. The film Eat consists of a man eating a mushroom for 45 minutes. Warhol attended the 1962 premiere of the static composition by LaMonte Young called Trio for Strings and subsequently created his famous series of static films including Kiss, Eat, and Sleep (for which Young initially was commissioned to provide music). Uwe Husslein cites filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who accompanied Warhol to the Trio premiere, and who claims Warhol's static films were directly inspired by the performance.

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

Factory: 1342 Lexington Avenue (the first Factory)

The Factory: 231 East 47th street 1963–1967 (the building no longer exists)

Factory: 33 Union Square 1967–1973 (Decker Building)

Factory: 860 Broadway (near 33 Union Square) 1973–1984 (the building has now been completely remodeled and was for a time (2000–2001) the headquarters of the dot-com consultancy Scient)

Factory: 22 East 33rd Street 1984–1987 (the building no longer exists)

Home: 1342 Lexington Avenue

Home: 57 East 66th street (Warhol's last home)

Last personal studio: 158 Madison Avenue

Filmography

Music

In the mid 1960s, Warhol adopted the band the Velvet Underground, making them a crucial element of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia performance art show. Warhol, with Paul Morrissey, acted as the band's manager, introducing them to Nico (who would perform with the band at Warhol's request). In 1966 he "produced" their first album The Velvet Underground & Nico, as well as providing its album art. His actual participation in the album's production amounted to simply paying for the studio time. After the band's first album, Warhol and band leader Lou Reed started to disagree more about the direction the band should take, and their artistic friendship ended. In 1989, after Warhol's death, Reed and John Cale re-united for the first time since 1972 to write, perform, record and release the concept album Songs for Drella, a tribute to Warhol.

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

Beginning in the early 1950s, Warhol produced several unbound portfolios of his work.

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:

A Gold Book

Wild Raspberries

Holy Cats

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.

(1980, ISBN 0-15-672960-1), authored by Warhol and Pat Hackett is a retrospective view of the sixties and the role of pop art.

The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989, ISBN 0-446-39138-7), edited by Pat Hackett, is a diary dictated by Warhol to Hackett in daily phone conversations. Warhol started the diary to keep track of his expenses after being audited, although it soon evolved to include his personal and cultural observations.

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

Although Andy Warhol is most known for his paintings and films, he authored works in many different media. Drawing: Warhol started his career as a commercial illustrator, producing drawings in "blotted-ink" style for advertisements and magazine articles. Best known of these early works are his drawings of shoes. Some of his personal drawings were self-published in small booklets, such as Yum, Yum, Yum (about food), Ho, Ho, Ho (about Christmas) and (of course) Shoes, Shoes, Shoes. His most artistically acclaimed book of drawings is probably A Gold Book, compiled of sensitive drawings of young men. A Gold Book is so named because of the gold leaf that decorates its pages. Sculpture: Warhol's most famous sculpture is probably his Brillo Boxes, silkscreened ink on wood replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes (designed by James Harvey), part of a series of "grocery carton" sculptures that also included Heinz ketchup and Campbell's tomato juice cases. Other famous works include the Silver Clouds– helium filled, silver mylar, pillow-shaped balloons. A Silver Cloud was included in the traveling exhibition Air Art (1968–69) curated by Willoughby Sharp. Clouds was also adapted by Warhol for avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham's dance piece RainForest (1968). Audio: At one point Warhol carried a portable recorder with him wherever he went, taping everything everybody said and did. He referred to this device as his "wife". Some of these tapes were the basis for his literary work. Another audio-work of Warhol's was his "Invisible Sculpture", a presentation in which burglar alarms would go off when entering the room. Warhol's cooperation with the musicians of The Velvet Underground was driven by an expressed desire to become a music producer. Time Capsules: In 1973, Warhol began saving ephemera from his daily life– correspondence, newspapers, souvenirs, childhood objects, even used plane tickets and food– which was sealed in plain cardboard boxes dubbed Time Capsules. By the time of his death, the collection grew to include 600, individually dated "capsules". The boxes are now housed at the Andy Warhol Museum. Television: Andy Warhol dreamed of a television show that he wanted to call The Nothing Special, a special about his favorite subject: Nothing. Later in his career he did create two cable television shows, Andy Warhol's TV in 1982 and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes (based on his famous "fifteen minutes of fame" quotation) for MTV in 1986. Besides his own shows he regularly made guest appearances on other programs, including The Love Boat wherein a Midwestern wife (Marion Ross) fears Andy Warhol will reveal to her husband (Tom Bosley, who starred alongside Ross in sitcom Happy Days) her secret past as a Warhol superstar named Marina del Rey. Warhol also produced a TV commercial for Schrafft's Restaurants in New York City, for an ice cream dessert appropriately titled the "Underground Sundae". Fashion: Warhol is quoted for having said: "I'd rather buy a dress and put it up on the wall, than put a painting, wouldn't you?" One of his most well-known Superstars, Edie Sedgwick, aspired to be a fashion designer, and his good friend Halston was a famous one. Warhol's work in fashion includes silkscreened dresses, a short sub-career as a catwalk-model and books on fashion as well as paintings with fashion (shoes) as a subject. Performance Art: Warhol and his friends staged theatrical multimedia happenings at parties and public venues, combining music, film, slide projections and even Gerard Malanga in an S&M; outfit cracking a whip. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable in 1966 was the culmination of this area of his work. Theater: Andy Warhol's PORK opened on May 5, 1971 at LaMama theater in New York for a two week run and was brought to the Roundhouse in London for a longer run in August, 1971. Pork was based on tape-recorded conversations between Brigin Berlin and Andy during which Brigid would play for Andy tapes she had made of phone conversations between herself and her mother, socialite Honey Berlin. The play featured Jayne County as "Vulva" and Cherry Vanilla as "Amanda Pork". In 1974, Andy Warhol also produced the stage musical Man On The Moon, which was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Photography: To produce his silkscreens, Warhol made photographs or had them made by his friends and assistants. These pictures were mostly taken with a specific model of Polaroid camera that Polaroid kept in production especially for Warhol. This photographic approach to painting and his snapshot method of taking pictures has had a great effect on artistic photography. Warhol was an accomplished photographer, and took an enormous amount of photographs of Factory visitors, friends. Computer: Warhol used Amiga computers to generate digital art, which he helped design and build with Amiga, Inc. He also displayed the difference between slow fill and fast fill on live TV with Debbie Harry as a model. (video)

Producer and product

Warhol had assistance in producing his paintings. This is also true of his film-making and commercial enterprises.

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

It is thought that Warhol was homosexual, and quite likely a virgin. His family maintains that he was not homosexual and was celibate. The question of how Warhol's sexuality influenced his work and shaped his relationship to the art world is a major subject of scholarship on the artist and is an issue that Warhol himself addressed in interviews, in conversation with his contemporaries, and in his publications (e.g. Popism: The Warhol Sixties). Throughout his career, Warhol produced erotic photography and drawings of male nudes. Many of his most famous works (portraits of Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor, and films like Blow Job, My Hustler and Lonesome Cowboys) draw from gay underground culture and/or openly explore the complexity of sexuality and desire. Many of his films premiered in gay porn theaters. The first works that he submitted to a fine art gallery, homoerotic drawings of male nudes, were rejected for being too openly gay. In Popism, furthermore, the artist recalls a conversation with the film maker Emile de Antonio about the difficulty Warhol had being accepted socially by the then more famous (but closeted) gay artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. De Antonio explained that Warhol was "too swish and that upsets them." In response to this, Warhol writes, "There was nothing I could say to that. It was all too true. So I decided I just wasn't going to care, because those were all the things that I didn't want to change anyway, that I didn't think I 'should' want to change... Other people could change their attitudes but not me". In exploring Warhol's biography, many turn to this period – the late 1950s and early 1960s – as a key moment in the development of his persona. Some have suggested that his frequent refusal to comment on his work, to speak about himself (confining himself in interviews to responses like "Um, no" and "Um, yes", and often allowing others to speak for him) – and even the evolution of his pop style – can be traced to the years when Warhol was first dismissed by the inner circles of the New York art world.

Religious beliefs

Warhol was a practicing Ruthenian Rite Catholic. He regularly volunteered at homeless shelters in New York, particularly during the busier times of the year, and described himself as a religious person. Several of Warhol's later works depicted religious subjects, including two series, Details of Renaissance Paintings (1984) and The Last Supper (1986). In addition, a body of religious-themed works was found posthumously in his estate.

Movies about Warhol

;Dramatic portrayals

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

Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board

Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000

Andy Warhol Bridge in Pittsburgh.

Bodley Gallery

15 minutes of fame

Moon Museum

References

Further reading

"A symposium on Pop Art". Arts Magazine, April 1963, pp. 36–45. The symposium was held in 1962, at The Museum of Modern Art, and published in this issue the following year.

Doyle, Jennifer, Jonathan Flatley, and José Esteban Muñoz eds. (1996). Pop Out: Queer Warhol. Durham: Duke University Press.

Foster, Hal, The Return of the Real (ch.5), MIT Press / October Book, 1996.

James, James, "Andy Warhol: The Producer as Author", in Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties (1989), pp. 58–84. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Krauss, Rosalind E. "Warhol's Abstract Spectacle". In Abstraction, Gesture, Ecriture: Paintings from the Daros Collection. New York: Scalo, 1999, pp. 123–33.

Lippard, Lucy R., Pop Art, Thames and Hudson, 1970 (1985 reprint), ISBN 0-500-20052-1

Scherman, Tony & Dalton, David, POP: The Genius of Andy Warhol, HarperCollins, New York, N.Y. 2009

Suarez, Juan Antonio (1996). Bike Boys, Drag Queens, & Superstars: Avant-Garde, Mass Culture, and Gay Identities in the 1960s Underground Cinema. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

External links

Warhol Foundation in New York City

Andy Warhol Collection in Pittsburgh

Time Capsules: the Andy Warhol Collection

Documentation of recent exhibitions of work by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol at Brooke Alexander Gallery

Andy Warhol's Empire group on Facebook

David Cronenberg speaking about the work of Andy Warhol">David Cronenberg speaking about the work of Andy Warhol on UbuWeb

Warholstars: Andy Warhol Films, Art and Superstars

Pop Art Masters – Andy Warhol

Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work

"Warhol, Soup Cans, Cowboys" (Studio 360 radio program, December 10, 2005)

exhibition of 10 statues of liberty in Gallerie Lavignes bastille, Paris 1986

The Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art – city of origin

Warhol in Paris - slideshow by The First Post

digital painting of Debbie Harry at the Commodore Amiga product launch press conference in 1985">Andy Warhol makes a digital painting of Debbie Harry at the Commodore Amiga product launch press conference in 1985

Category:1928 births Category:1987 deaths Category:20th-century artists Category:20th-century painters Category:20th-century writers Category:American artists Category:American cinematographers Category:American Eastern Catholics Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American painters Category:American people of Rusyn descent Category:American people of Slovak descent Category:American printmakers Category:American screenwriters Category:American shooting survivors Category:American socialites Category:Artists from New York Category:Artists from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Attempted assassination survivors Category:Carnegie Mellon University alumni Category:Censorship in the arts Category:Contemporary artists Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Deaths from surgical complications Category:Fashion illustrators Category:Gay artists Category:Gay writers Category:LGBT Christians Category:LGBT directors Category:LGBT people from the United States Category:LGBT visual artists Category:Photographers from New York Category:Pop artists Category:Postmodern artists Category:Ruthenian Catholics Category:The Velvet Underground Category:Warhola family

Name	Peter Doherty
Background	solo_singer
Born	March 12, 1979Hexham, Northumberland England
Origin	London, England
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, bass guitar, harmonica, melodica, piano, organ
Genre	Alternative rockindie rockavant-garde rockpost-punk revival
Occupation	Musician, songwriter, writer
Years active	1997–present|
Associated acts	The LibertinesBabyshambles
Notable instruments	Epiphone CoronetGibson SGGibson ES-125Epiphone Casino

Peter Doherty (born 12 March 1979) is an English musician, writer, actor, and artist. He is best known musically, for being co-frontman of The Libertines, which he reformed with Carl Barât in 2010. His other musical project is indie band Babyshambles. In 2005, Doherty became prominent in tabloids, the news media, and pop culture blogs because of his romantic relationship with model Kate Moss and his frequently-publicised drug addictions.

Early life

Peter Doherty was born in Hexham, Northumberland, England, the son of Jacqueline (née Michels), who is of paternal Jewish and maternal Russian descent and Peter John Doherty, who is of Irish descent. He had a Catholic upbringing and grew up at a number of army garrisons, due to his father's work as an officer in the British Army, living at various times at garrisons in Catterick, Belfast, Wildenrath Barracks in the north west of Germany (right behind Peter Slater's house in Krefeld), Bedworth, Dorset and Larnaca, along with his mother, a nurse, and two sisters, Amy Jo and Emily. 5 of which were A* grades, at Nicholas Chamberlaine Comprehensive School in Bedworth and four passes at A Level, two at grade A. At the age of 16, he won a poetry competition and embarked on a tour of Russia organised by the British Council.

After his A-levels, he moved to his grandmother's flat in London — where he said he felt 'destined' to be—and got a job filling graves in Willesden Cemetery, although most of his time was spent reading and writing while sitting on gravestones. In a clip later made famous by YouTube, an eighteen-year old Doherty can be seen in an interview with MTV, on the day of the release of Oasis' Be Here Now album. He attended Queen Mary, part of the University of London, to study English literature, but left the course after his first year.

The two initially fell out over this incident, but made amends whilst Doherty was in prison. He was originally sentenced to 6 months, but his sentence was cut to 2 months. Upon his release, Doherty immediately reunited with Barât and the rest of the band to play a gig in the Tap 'n' Tin pub in Chatham, Kent.

Following his rejoining of the band, Doherty sought treatment for his drug addiction. He attended the alternative detox centre Wat Tham Krabok, a temple in Thailand, famous for its rehabilitation program for crack and heroin users. He left after three days and returned to England. As a consequence of this, The Libertines cancelled appearances that they were due to make at the Isle of Wight and Glastonbury festivals.

However, while post-production work was taking place on the second Libertines album (also called The Libertines) in June 2004, Doherty was again asked to leave the band. The band cited Doherty's continuing drug addiction as the reason for his dismissal, but emphasised their willingness to take him back once he had addressed his addiction. Although Barât had previously stated that the Libertines were merely on hiatus, pending Doherty's recovery, the group effectively disbanded with Doherty's departure at the end of 2004. The reunited Libertines played "What a Waster", "Death on the Stairs", "The Good Old Days", "What Katie Did", "Dilly Boys", "Seven Deadly Sins", "France", "Tell the King", "Don't Look Back into the Sun", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Time for Heroes", "Albion" and "The Delaney".

Doherty and Barat announced on 29 March 2010 that The Libertines will reunite to play the Reading and Leeds festival on August 28. They also announced that they will be playing a gig beforehand at "the forum".

Collaborations

Prior to the disbanding of The Libertines, Doherty collaborated with local poet Wolfman. Together they recorded the single "For Lovers", which entered the top 10, charting at number 7, in April of the same year. Despite the success of the single, which was nominated for a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for songwriting, Doherty and Wolfman received relatively little money, having already sold the publishing rights for a small sum in a pub.

Later in 2004, Doherty provided guest vocals to the song "Down to the Underground" by the British group Client. The song was released in June 2004 as a B-side to the group's single "In It for the Money" and appears on their second album City.

In 2005 Doherty collaborated with the British rock band Littl'ans on the single "Their Way".

In 2006, Doherty was featured on the charity single "Janie Jones", which was released to raise funds for Strummerville. A number of artists and bands, such as Dirty Pretty Things, We Are Scientists, The Kooks and The Holloways, also featured on the track.

In August 2006 it was announced that Doherty was recording with The Streets frontman Mike Skinner on a new version of "Prangin' Out", from Skinner's album The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living.

Babyshambles

Doherty founded Babyshambles towards the end of his time with The Libertines. The group has released two studio albums, Down in Albion, in November 2005 and Shotter's Nation in October 2007. The band's touring schedule and releases have occasionally been disrupted by Doherty's ongoing legal problems.

The line-up of the band has changed several times: drummer Gemma Clarke left the band due to Doherty's drug problems and was replaced by Adam Ficek, and guitarist and co-songwriter Patrick Walden has also left the band and was replaced by Mick Whitnall.

In August 2006, Babyshambles signed up with major record label Parlophone, on which they released The Blinding EP on 9 December 2006 to critical acclaim. In January 2007, they signed a long term record deal with Parlophone.

In November 2007 Babyshambles played their first arena tour, taking in dates at the MEN Arena in Manchester, the Nottingham Arena, Bournemouth International Centre, London's Wembley Arena and Birmingham's National Indoor Arena.

Solo work and Guerrilla gigs

Doherty has been working on new acoustic material, similar to the wealth of his unreleased songs that can already be downloaded on the internet. On his own, and often with his band, he has continued The Libertines' tradition of performing on short notice guerrilla gigs in small venues. On New Year's Eve 2005, Doherty held a guerrilla gig in his North London flat where he showcased some of his solo works, many of which later leaked onto the internet. 31 March and 1 April 2006 Doherty was performing two surprising solo gigs, his first in mainland Europe, at the NonStop Kino pornographic cinema and venue in Graz, Austria, after he failed to turn up for an earlier arrangement in January. For this occasion he produced, at the suggestion of Bettina Aichbauer, friend of Doherty and owner of the NonStop Kino, a film with the title Spew It Out Your Soul which he showed on screen during his performance. , where Doherty played his biggest solo show as of 2008.]] On 12 July 2008, Doherty played a solo gig at the Royal Albert Hall. It was his biggest solo show so far. The concert was originally scheduled for 26 April, but had to be rescheduled to a later date due to Doherty being sentenced to 14 weeks in prison for breaching probation on 8 April. The solo show did not get the best ratings but was all in all still well received. According to the critics "whole chunks of the set passed by as listless noodling, with neither Doherty nor the audience appearing to know quite how to behave". The consensus was that - without a full band - Doherty seemed out of place at such a big venue. Friend and collaborater Peter Wolfe had a guest appearance on stage when Doherty performed "For Lovers". Wolfe's performance however did not meet critical acclaim. The Daily Telegraph stated Wolfe would have ruined the song with "some especially tuneless backing vocals". The gig was forced to an abrupt end during the encore due to a stage invasion by the fans.

On 13 January 2009, NME.COM announced that Doherty's solo album, entitled Grace/Wastelands would be released on 16 March, preceded by a single, "Last of the English Roses", on 9 March. The website also revealed the tracklisting of the album and credits. In 2009 Doherty was made an honorary patron of the University Philosophical Society.

Whilst performing a solo gig at the Grimsby Auditorium in March 2009, Doherty declared Grimsby a "shit-hole" mid-way through his set after being continuously pelted with coins and drinks by a harsh crowd.

Painting and writing

In June 2006, Doherty announced that he had signed a deal with Orion Books to publish his journals, in which he had recorded poetry, drawings, and photos over the course of his career. Most of Doherty's journals are freely available on the internet. The book, titled The Books Of Albion: The Collected Writings of Peter Doherty, was released on 21 June 2007.

On 15 May 2007, Doherty exhibited his paintings for the first time. The art exhibition took place at the London's Bankrobber Gallery, and was on show for one month. The collection featured 14 paintings.

For a whole month, from 25 April to 25 May 2008, an exhibition of Doherty's paintings, titled "Art Of The Albion", took place at the Chappe Gallery in Paris. The art exhibition caused controversy because of the art works being made with Doherty's own blood. According to newspapers, anti-drug campaigners were enraged and accused Doherty of glamorising illegal substance abuse. Art experts were similarly unimpressed - David West, the owner of London's Decima gallery, slammed Doherty's work: "It's not got any artistic merit. He's using his blood to make them interesting, but when you look at them they're what any four-year-old can do."

Modelling

Following in the footsteps of model and ex-fiancée Kate Moss, Doherty became the face of Roberto Cavalli's Fall 2007/2008 fashion advertising campaign. The photos gained praise for depicting a much cleaner and more handsome Doherty. The '50s-style photographs have also been compared to images of Marlon Brando.

Acting

On December 9th, 2010 it was reported that Doherty would be taking the lead role in a film adaption of Alfred de Musset's autobiographical novel La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Influences

In interviews, Doherty has listed his favourite books as George Orwell's 1984, Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet, Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire and the complete works of Oscar Wilde. He has also mentioned Emily Dickinson and Tony Hancock as influences; Doherty and his father were once members of the Tony Hancock Appreciation Society. Doherty mentions Hancock, and makes an allusion to his famous phrase 'Stone me!', in an early song entitled "You're My Waterloo". However, numerous literary and musical allusions occur throughout Doherty's ongoing Books of Albion. He places particular importance on the Romantic poets and on existential philosophers such as Albert Camus and Miguel de Unamuno. Doherty has also alluded to work by the Marquis de Sade and Thomas de Quincey. On the Babyshambles album Down in Albion, there is a track entitled "À rebours", which is significantly influenced by the novel of the same name by Joris-Karl Huysmans. His favourite films include British films of the 1960s and seventies such as Billy Liar, Poor Cow, O Lucky Man! and the film versions of Steptoe and Son. He is particularly fond of The Smiths and The Clash.

Doherty has also supported up-and-coming British bands, such as indie bands The Paddingtons

Doherty is also known to be a devoted follower of Queens Park Rangers football club. As a youth he wrote a fanzine, entitled "All Quiet on the Western Avenue".

Drug abuse and legal problems

, showing a certificate proving he had passed a drugs test while inside.]] Doherty has been repeatedly arrested for drug offences and those arising from drug use, such as driving under the influence, car theft, and driving with a suspended licence. He has pled guilty to possession of crack cocaine, heroin, cannabis and ketamine. Doherty stated that he has been a rent boy, and that during that time he robbed one of his male clients.

In 2003, while Doherty's first band The Libertines was performing in Japan, he broke into Carl Barât's flat and stole various items, including an old guitar and a laptop computer. On 7 September Doherty was sentenced by Judge Roger Davies to 6 months in prison, however the sentence was eventually shortened to two months on appeal with the judge commenting, "We feel that a custodial sentence was justified in this case but sufficient credit was not given for his timely plea of guilty which it should have been. We have reduced his sentence to two months which will allow for his almost immediate release." Doherty was released from jail on 8 October.

On 2 February 2005, Doherty was arrested after an altercation with documentary filmaker Max Carlish, who was making a rockumentary about the singer and sold photos of a heroin smoking Doherty to the tabloids. Doherty and his friend Alan Wass had been charged with robbery and blackmail. On 7 February Doherty was released on bail after his record company Rough Trade put up £150,000 in bonds. All charges against him were later dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service due to a lack of evidence.

In late 2007, a photo was published in several newspapers of Doherty allegedly forcing his pet cat to inhale from a crack pipe.

On 8 April 2008, Doherty was jailed for 14 weeks by a court for breaching a probation order after a string of brushes with the law for drugs and driving offenses. On the 18 April 2008, he was moved to a private area of Wormwood Scrubs prison after learning that fellow inmates were planning to attack him, therefore making it safer for the singer. On 6 May 2008, he was released after his sentence was cut in half and further 18 days were remitted due to a government plan to reduce overcrowding. He also had another 2 days off for being in police custody (after serving just over 4 weeks of a 14-week sentence). He described prison life as "a lot of gangsters and Radio 4" and showed a certificate confirming he had passed a drugs test while inside.

Doherty made another attempt to fight his drug addiction in September 2007, when he underwent rehab for six weeks at Clouds House. However, Doherty relapsed in November 2007 following his appearance at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2007 in Munich. In September 2008 Andy Boyd, Doherty's manager, claimed in an interview with the Daily Mail that Doherty did not get off heroin. Boyd stated: "The only time I can be sure he’s not doing heroin or crack is when he’s in rehab or prison or asleep." and implied that when Doherty had an implant fitted, which blocks the body’s opiate receptors, he replaced heroin with another drug.

In June 2009, Doherty was arrested in Gloucester and charged with driving dangerously, while drunk, and being in possession of heroin. He was released on a £50,000 bail and after 'guilty' pleas were entered, was asked to return to court on 21 December for sentencing. On this date, Doherty was spared jail but was ordered to pay £2,050 in fines, and was banned from driving for 18 months, despite the court hearing Doherty had 21 previous drug offences and six motoring offences. Following his release from court, he was escorted by officers to the nearest police station and re-arrested for possession of a controlled substance, later revealed to be heroin. The following day, 22 December, it emerged that Doherty could be charged with offences linked to a hit-and-run incident, which left a pedestrian in a critical condition. Doherty's manager, Andrew Boyd, has already appeared in court charged with a number of offences relating to the incident. On 11 March 2010, Lowestoft magistrates fined Doherty £500 and banned him from driving for 12 months for allowing his Daimler car to be used uninsured by his manager.

On 19 March 2010, Doherty was arrested on suspicion of supplying controlled drugs. He was reported to be bail until April 2010.

In June 2010 Doherty was, after spending 10 hours in detention in JFK Airport, refused entry into the United States - despite having a visa.

On 18 October 2010, Doherty was summoned to court under the charge of cocaine possession. It is unknown of his conviction as yet.

Family and personal life

Doherty has an older sister Amy-Jo and a younger sister Emily. His mother Jacqueline Doherty is a nurse, who published a book about family life with Doherty and his drug problems, called Pete Doherty: My Prodigal Son (ISBN 978-0755316083).

After numerous attempts to convince him to start a serious rehab, in early 2005 Doherty's father decided that he was tired of broken promises and vowed never to see his son until he was clean of drugs. The sensitivity surrounding the issue became apparent in the BBC Two Arena documentary about Doherty, on 12 November 2006, which included footage of him talking about this aspect of his personal life. He was visibly upset and had to politely ask the interviewer at one point to stop filming. In October 2007, Doherty said in an interview with BBC Radio 4 show, Front Row, that he briefly reconciled with his father after 3 years of no contact when his father came to visit him in rehab, but they are currently estranged due to his ongoing difficulties with drugs. In a radio interview in France on July 6, 2009, Doherty stated that 'I'm clean – the last 11 days I've been clean for the first time in quite a long time.' Doherty also stated that 'as we speak' work has begun on the third Babyshambles album, stating that he was keen to begin writing while he was clean, however he displayed some anxiety at writing music while clean due to the fact many of his songs have been written under the influence of drugs.

Doherty has had a tumultuous relationship with Kate Moss, frequently covered by the press. They met in January 2005 at Moss' 31st birthday party and have had an on-off relationship since. Moss has also taken to singing at some of Doherty's shows. On 11 April 2007 Doherty announced Moss as his fiancée during the first of his solo gigs at the Hackney Empire, London, at which Moss also performed. Doherty planned to marry Moss during the summer 2007. Since July 2007 Moss and Doherty have broken up.

In October 2007 Doherty was briefly engaged to fashion model Irina Lazareanu.

Doherty has a son named Astile Louis Doherty (born Camden, London, 12 July 2003) with singer Lisa Moorish.

Doherty currently lives in a nine-bedroomed red-brick Georgian house on the outskirts of Marlborough, Wiltshire - the house is leased from Lord Cardigan. Doherty chose Wiltshire to seek 'peace and quiet', and also because his probation order doesn't allow him to live in a residence with a London postcode.

Musical equipment

Doherty prefers vintage equipment. Unfortunately, many of his vintage guitars and amplifers have been destroyed in various domestic incidents.

Guitars

Epiphone Coronet

Gibson ES-125

Epiphone Casino

Rickenbacker 360

Gibson ES-345

Amplifers

Vox AC30

Matchless Amplifer Marshall Amplifier

Discography

Solo Album

Grace/Wastelands (16 March 2009) UK #17

Singles

; non-album singles:

"For Lovers" (Wolfman featuring Pete Doherty) (12 April 2004) UK #7

"Their Way" (Littl'ans featuring Pete Doherty) (17 October 2005) UK #22

"Prangin' Out" (The Streets featuring Pete Doherty) (25 September 2006) UK #25

; from Grace/Wastelands:

"Last of the English Roses" (9 March 2009) UK #67

"Broken Love Song" (3 August 2009)

Other appearances

Down To The Underground (Client, featuring Pete Doherty). Taken from the City album.

Bibliography

The Books of Albion: The Collected Writings of Peter Doherty (2007, Orion Books; ISBN 0-752-88591-X)

Awards and honours

2004: Doherty was voted to be joint #1 in NME's 2004 Cool List, along with fellow Libertine Carl Barât. The following year he was placed at #6, and on 10 May 2006 was voted #2 in their poll depicting 50 of rock's greatest heroes. 2008: On 28 February 2008, Doherty won the "Hero of the Year" award at the 2008 Shockwave NME Awards. 2009: On 25 February 2009, Doherty won the "Best Solo Artist" award at the 2009 Shockwave NME Awards.

References

External links

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