The Andy Warhol Museum https://www.warhol.org Tue, 02 Aug 2022 19:27:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 Paola Pivi: Creation Stories and Making Possible the Impossible https://www.warhol.org/paola-pivi-creation-stories-and-making-possible-the-impossible/ https://www.warhol.org/paola-pivi-creation-stories-and-making-possible-the-impossible/#respond Fri, 10 Jun 2022 16:27:13 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=12209 In the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, God created the universe in one week. The land animals and man appeared on the sixth day.1  In this creation narrative, the first man was designed in God’s own image and named Adam. He would go on to name every living creature and settle in Paradise, alongside his partner Eve. After eating forbidden fruit with the encouragement of an evil serpent, the couple was banished, thus fracturing mankind’s relationship with nature and the animal kingdom. Today, with the advancements in civilization and personal lifestyles, our modern relationship with the wild has become even more distanced. Artist Paola Pivi attempts to restore these bonds by creating them herself, and often from scratch. Her twenty-first century approach takes on many forms. From staged encounters with a live menagerie, all of the same colour, to building a functioning recording studio of animal noises, to travelling through the Alaskan wilderness as a fake journalist for a dog-sled race, Pivi pushes us to reconsider nature in our artificial world of industrial design, technology, fashion, transportation, art and architecture. Her ideas, from concept to completion, result in marvels, such as literally making fish fly. To clarify, Pivi is not God, nor godlike, however she deeply contemplates creation. She unites organic life with our manufactured matter to reconsider them harmoniously together in mystical situations, thus combining the arts, from sculpture, photography and performance to theatrical storyboarding and mise-en-scène.

After abandoning her studies in chemical nuclear engineering, Pivi shifted her ambitions and attended the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. As a student there she made her first artwork in 1994. The aspiring artist gathered ready-made objects to assemble, in her words, ‘a shirt, in which I put knives, with the blades sticking out like a porcupine, which I wore’.2  The pierced purple blouse, perhaps suggesting costume or armour, also hinted at a future practice of making art with the animal kingdom in mind. ‘The first animals that came into my art were the two ostriches on the boat…I never had any inclinations towards animals, and then all of a sudden they started popping up everywhere,’ Pivi states.3  Since 2003, an exotic cast has taken centre stage in her work. From ostriches, horses and sheep to donkeys, bears and zebras, wildlife invaded Pivi’s imagination. As ringleader she organizes impossible tableaux vivants starring magnificent creatures in unusual settings. For example, a leopard (safely) paces an encaged gallery around 3,000 fabricated cappuccino cups or an alligator meanders through 10,000 litres of whipped cream in the Florida Everglades.4  The final images, printed at various scales, emerge from intimately staged and meticulously detailed performances that are professionally filmed and photographed.

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Warhol At Pitt: When Andy Returned to Pittsburgh https://www.warhol.org/warhol-at-pitt-when-andy-returned-to-pittsburgh/ https://www.warhol.org/warhol-at-pitt-when-andy-returned-to-pittsburgh/#respond Fri, 01 Apr 2022 22:40:42 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=12015 Andy Warhol is one of the most famous Pittsburghers in American history, yet his storied and often scandalous career in New York City tends to overshadow his Rust Belt roots. However, in the years since Warhol’s death, Pittsburgh has become the home of The Andy Warhol Museum, the Andy Warhol Bridge, and several murals celebrating Warhol as its native son. The artist’s legacy is now a major asset to the city of Pittsburgh, but what did Pittsburghers think of him during his lifetime? One resource that could help answer this question is the archives of The Pitt News, the University of Pittsburgh’s student newspaper. Although Warhol first became famous for his Campbells Soup Can paintings in 1962, Pitt students did not get much exposure to Warhol until the late 1960s. It was during the years of 1967–1970 that Andy Warhol’s name first appeared in The Pitt News. That’s when the artist exhibited his Pop Art and experimental films in Pittsburgh for the first time, and when he made his first and only documented return to Pittsburgh. Naturally, this means that college students in Pittsburgh during that era had more opportunities to encounter Warhol and his work than ever before. Even though Warhol was not very popular as a college student in the 1940s, he became wildly popular among college students in the 1960s. Warhol’s coverage in The Pitt News and other local news outlets on his 1968 visit to the Pitt campus shows that Pittsburgh college students took a great interest in Warhol’s art, his films, and his radical queer identity.

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Jessica Beck in Conversation with Franklin Sirmans https://www.warhol.org/jessica-beck-in-conversation-with-franklin-sirmans/ https://www.warhol.org/jessica-beck-in-conversation-with-franklin-sirmans/#respond Fri, 12 Nov 2021 16:08:42 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=11321 Marisol and Warhol Take New York is the culmination of four years of collaborative planning and research. Conversations with the catalogue contributors and program partners enriched every aspect of the exhibition’s development and helped frame Marisol’s narrative of erasure and how this resonates with the experiences of women and con-temporary artists of color today. As part of a long-standing effort between The Warhol and the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) to bring our collections into dialogue, our two institutions worked together to travel this exhibition to Miami. In the following conversation, PAMM director Franklin Sirmans and I speak about the value of this exhibition for both of our institutions and for art history more generally. —Jessica Beck

 

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D.S. Kinsel and Quaishawn Whitlock https://www.warhol.org/d-s-kinsel-and-quaishawn-whitlock/ https://www.warhol.org/d-s-kinsel-and-quaishawn-whitlock/#respond Fri, 20 Aug 2021 11:21:51 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=11079 D.S. Kinsel is an award-winning artist, creative entrepreneur, and agitator based in Pittsburgh. He joins Quaishawn Whitlock, Artist Educator at The Warhol and frequent collaborator, for a dynamic conversation exploring Jean-Michel Basquiat’s artistic practice and legendary persona. They take a closer look at rarely exhibited objects from The Warhol’s collection, from tools and clothing Basquiat used in his studio to the poignant collaborative sculpture he created in response to the murder of Michael Stewart, a fellow Black artist, in 1984.

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Cassandra Jenkins https://www.warhol.org/cassandra-jenkins/ https://www.warhol.org/cassandra-jenkins/#respond Fri, 20 Aug 2021 10:55:13 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=11075 Many thanks to Cassandra Jenkins for recording this intimate solo Silver Home Studio Session, featuring two songs from her recent and critically praised album Overview on Phenomenal Nature. We’re fortunate that we’ll get to hear the album live, since she will be joining us, along with her band, for our inaugural Sound Series: Block Party on September 18, as we return to live, in-person performance on an outdoor stage on the North Shore.

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Just American https://www.warhol.org/just-american/ https://www.warhol.org/just-american/#respond Sat, 31 Jul 2021 19:56:03 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=10880 Andy Warhol began his publication America (1985) with a reflection on his early years and the universal curiosity about life beyond our limited boundaries:

Everybody has their own America, and then they have the pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see. When I was little, I never left Pennsylvania, and I used to have fantasies about things that I thought were happening in the Midwest, or down South, or in Texas, that I felt I was missing out on. But you can only live in one place at a time. And your own life while it’s happening to you never has any atmosphere until it’s a memory. So the fantasy corners of America seem so atmospheric because you’ve pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books. And you live in your dream America that you’ve custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one.5 

Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 into a poor working-class Carpatho-Rusyn family. The Warhola family had recently immigrated to Pittsburgh, then an industrial Goliath in steel production, and settled in the Ruska Dolina, a neighborhood of compatriots anchored by Saint John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church and adjacent to steel mills and the Monongahela River. His father, Andrej Warhola, a laborer, died in 1942, when Andy was thirteen years old, leaving his mother, Julia, to support the family with the assistance of his two older brothers. Julia herself was not only a hardworking, pious caregiver but also a self-taught artist who made flowers from old tin cans and crepe paper, which she sold door to door, and produced hundreds of drawings, mostly of cats and angels. Warhol, a sickly child, spent copious amounts of time with Julia, who nurtured his physical health and spiritual well-being as well as his artistic side. This would get them through the Great Depression and World War II, and in 1945 Warhol entered Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), where he would earn a degree in pictorial design. The young graduate made a swift relocation to New York City in 1949.

 

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Acetate Collage https://www.warhol.org/acetate-collage/ https://www.warhol.org/acetate-collage/#respond Fri, 23 Jul 2021 18:17:09 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=10810 In this activity, you will learn how Andy Warhol combined photography, collage, silkscreening, and drawing to create a more “collaged” look and feel in some of his commissioned portraits in the 1970s and 1980s. By adding torn graphic color aid papers underneath acetate and then drawing on top, he was able to experiment with different color combinations before committing to a color scheme for his final silkscreened portrait.

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Vieux Farka Touré https://www.warhol.org/vieux-farka-toure/ https://www.warhol.org/vieux-farka-toure/#respond Thu, 08 Jul 2021 20:00:34 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=10700 We feel very fortunate that guitarist and songwriter Vieux Farka Touré recorded this Silver Home Studio Session for us from his home city of Bamako, Mali. And we’re thrilled that he’ll be joining us for our inaugural Sound Series: Block Party on September 18, as we return to live, in-person performance on an outdoor stage on the North Shore. Vieux, accompanied by his dynamic band, will be part of a roster six artists, as we celebrate the return to communal performance experiences and the universal nature of live music.

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Alan Pelaez Lopez and Jessica Lanay Moore Discuss ‘Fantasy America’ https://www.warhol.org/alan-pelaez-lopez-and-jessica-lanay-moore-discuss-fantasy-america/ https://www.warhol.org/alan-pelaez-lopez-and-jessica-lanay-moore-discuss-fantasy-america/#respond Thu, 24 Jun 2021 16:37:32 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=10674 On Tuesday, July 13 at 1 p.m. EDT, please join us for the YouTube Premiere of a conversation between Jessica Lanay Moore and Alan Pelaez Lopez, authors of the Fantasy America catalogue. Both writers will engage with artwork from the exhibition and discuss the artists, Andy Warhol, and notions around “America.”

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Sarah Huny Young on Basquiat, the Black Body, and Truth-Telling in Art https://www.warhol.org/sarah-huny-young-on-basquiat-the-black-body-and-truth-telling-in-art/ https://www.warhol.org/sarah-huny-young-on-basquiat-the-black-body-and-truth-telling-in-art/#respond Thu, 17 Jun 2021 21:30:16 +0000 https://www.warhol.org/?p=10513 Sarah Huny Young is an award-winning visual artist and cultural producer based in Pittsburgh. She joins Petra Floyd, Artist Educator at The Warhol, for a critical conversation exploring Andy Warhol’s Polaroid photographs of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the groundbreaking young painter who became a close friend and collaborator to Warhol in the 1980s. Their conversation explores the complex relationship between Warhol and Basquiat, representations of the Black body, and the notion of truth-telling in art and artifacts.

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