ASPEN ART MUSEUM Summer Magazine 2021

ASPEN ART MUSEUM ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES

DECEMBER 3, 2021–MARCH 27, 2022

Proud Partner of the Aspen Art Museum

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES

“It is a huge honor to be hosting ‘Andy Warhol: Lifetimes’ here in Aspen. I am thrilled that our ever-growing community of friends and supporters can experience firsthand such an impressive presentation of work by one of the most important artists of the 20th century. To see the AAM partnering with some of the greatest museums in the world fills me with pride. Our cutting edge, serious and engaging programming commands respect internationally and enriches and entertains our local audience—I couldn’t ask for more.” —John Phelan, Chair of the Board of Trustees, Aspen Art Museum

From the 1960s onwards Andy Warhol was a frequent visitor to Aspen, enjoy- ing the mountains as much as the lively party scene. And when the Aspen Center for the Visual Arts—now the AAM— opened in 1979, his work was included in the inaugural exhibition. So, in some ways ‘Andy Warhol: Lifetimes’ feels like something of a homecoming. This major

Major support for ‘Andy Warhol: Lifetimes’ is provided by Jane and Marc Nathanson. Additional support is provided by the generosity and participation of the Warhol Exhibition Circle: • Sarah Arison and Thomas Wilhelm • Barbara S. Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul • Christie’s International Real Estate Aspen Snowmass • Eleanore and Domenico De Sole • Justin Douglas • Marcy Edelstein • Sherry and Joe Felson • Anna and Matt Freedman • Erin Leider-Pariser and Paul Pariser • Melony and Adam Lewis • Nancy Magoon

survey, with more than 200 works by Warhol, focuses on the biographical underpinnings of his practice, expanding on the less exposed aspects of his work and persona. Organized by Tate Modern, London in collaboration with the Ludwig Museum, Cologne and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, we are proud to be the only US venue—making this the first solo exhibition in Colorado for Warhol in 37 years. In keeping with our artist-centered approach here at the AAM, I invited Los Angeles-based artist Monica Majoli to reimagine the show for us. Combining iconic works with fascinating archi- val material the exhibition is a fresh and intimate look at the work and life of one of the greatest artists of the 20th cen- tury, with Majoli choosing to cast a queer lens over Warhol, positioning him as an outsider and disruptor who remade America’s image to resonate within a queer sensibility. This magazine expands on the themes explored in the exhibi- tion: Monica Majoli discusses the importance Warhol holds for her as an artist and how she has approached working on this project, while in another interview Jane and Marc Nathanson, longtime champions of the AAM, founders of our Artists in Residence Program and generous supporters of this exhibition, discuss their love of Aspen, their approach to collecting and their most treasured pieces by Warhol. Other articles delve into Warhol’s image—both how he perceived himself and how he has been portrayed by others—and cast a light on less familiar areas of his practice, including his foray into the world of recipe books. One of Warhol’s earliest and most enduring friendships from his visits to Aspen was with the collectors John and Kimiko Powers, and I am thrilled to be a programming partner with our neighbors at the Powers Art Center. This is the AAM’s most ambitious project to date and, through collaborating with our friends, I hope these rich and complementary exhi- bitions will reach an ever-wider audience. As always, I am profoundly grateful to our many supporters here at the AAM. For this exhibition I wish to say a very spe- cial thank you to Jane and Marc Nathanson and the Warhol Exhibition Circle. I would also like to thank Prada for their support. The wonderful generosity of our good friends ena- bles us to stage the ambitious shows which have cemented the global standing of our museum. But, beyond that, the warmth and support of our community inspires me and the rest of the team here at the AAM to ensure that Aspen remains the thriving creative haven that Warhol himself appreciated so very much.

• Nicola and Jeff Marcus • Susan and Larry Marx • H. Gael Neeson • Kelli and Allen Questrom • Katie and Amnon Rodan

• Gayle Stoffel • Jamie Tisch

Additional thanks to Altair Advisers; Bruce Etkin; Sally and Steve Hansen; Sabrina and Michael Rudin. AAM exhibitions are made possible by the Marx Exhibition Fund. General exhibition support is provided by the Toby Devan Lewis Visiting Artist Fund. Additional support is provided by the AAM Board of Trustees and National Council.

Admission to the AAM is free courtesy of Amy and John Phelan.

Curated at Aspen Art Museum with archival and supplementary materials by Monica Majoli in collaboration with Nicola Lees, Nancy and Bob Magoon Director; Simone Krug, Assistant Curator; and the Aspen Art Museum team. Exhibition organized by Tate Modern, London in collaboration with Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Aspen Art Museum; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Curated by Gregor Muir, Director of Collection, International Art and Fiontán Moran, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern, London; Yilmaz Dziewior, Director and Stephan Diederich, Curator, Collection of 20th-century art, Museum Ludwig, Cologne.

Nicola Lees Nancy and Bob Magoon Director Aspen Art Museum

The AAM is grateful for the support of Prada.

Aspen Art Museum Board of Trustees

Trustees

Andy Warhol: Lifetimes Magazine

John Phelan Melony Lewis Amnon Rodan Mary Scanlan J ustin Douglas

Matthew McLean Sara Harrison Lauren Barrett Adriana Caneva Francesca Girelli Arianna Trabuio Kristina McLean

Barbara Bluhm-Kaul, Janet Crown, Domenico De Sole, Marcy Edelstein, Paul Edgerley, Joe Felson, Christy Ferer, Barbara Gamson, David Ganek, Ramiro Garza, Steve Hansen, Toby Devan Lewis (Emerita), Nancy Magoon, Nicola Marcus, Paul Pariser, Kelli Questrom, Nancy Rogers, Jamie Tisch

Chair

Editor

Project Editor Art Director

Copresident Copresident Secretary Treasurer

Designer

Head of Branded Content & Studios Content Production Assistant

Produced by Frieze Studios for Aspen Art Museum

Special thanks to

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

DEC 03 2021 – MAR 27 2022

CONTENTS

41 PUSH THE BUTTON

5 HE’S NOT THERE “Everybody’s seen some version of Andy on screen, so famous and easy to mimic that they could plausibly recognize him without knowing exactly who he is.” —Charlie Fox 6 HIS AND HERS AND THEIRS Harmony Holiday, Corey Grant Tippin and Terence Trouillot reflect on Warhol’s series, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ (1975). 14 SELF-MADE “He turned his life into art but also used art as a way to construct himself, and reassure himself of his place in the world.” —Dean Kissick

18 SEEING DOUBLE a conversation with Monica Majoli “The way I’ve dealt with Warhol is really to think of him both as a concept and as a person and just to try to move more deeply into him as an individual. He was so human.”—Monica Majoli 24 HOOKED TO THE SILVER SCREEN “Warhol’s films became legendary—they were direct and confrontational, shaped by his intuitive understanding of the mechanics of film. He turned the codes of filmmaking inside out, prioritizing a direct cutting-edge, performative engagement with narrative.”—John G. Hanhardt

26 ANDY IN THE HOUSE with Jane and Marc Nathanson “Warhol was hot in New York at the end of the 1960s, but he didn’t have the market recognition that he developed later on. So, we were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.”—Jane Nathanson 32 ANDY, ASPEN AND ME Gunnar Sachs, Ronald K. Greenberg, Nancy Magoon and Gael Neeson discuss their connections to Warhol. 34 COLORADO CONNECTION “In Aspen, as ever with Warhol, art, celebrity, life and performance are inseparable.”—Andrew Travers

Learn more about Warhol at the AAM’s very own Factory and join some of our special workshops. 42 CULINARYARTS “For anyone literate in cookbooks of the era, in which impossible-to-procure ingredients are frequently casually called for, the tone of its satire is spot-on.” —Fanny Singer 44 SHOP AT THE ASPEN ART MUSEUM Discover some of the items in our new Warhol-inspired shop, Possession Obsession, and revisit Jonathan Berger’s The Store.

On the Cover: Andy Warhol, Flowers , 1964, silkscreen on linen, 81 3/4 × 82 1/2 in. Courtesy: David Zwirner © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Join the AAM and get insider access to ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES December 3, 2021–March 27, 2022

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— Weekly workshops at The Factory — Create your own screen-printed artwork or a Polaroid portrait with a vintage camera — Panel discussions and artist talks — In-depth member tours led by museum staff — Film screenings — And more!

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Andy Warhol, [Silver Clouds AWM]. Silver Clouds at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Metalized polyester film with helium. © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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DEC 03 2021 – MAR 27 2022

Warhol on Screen

Throughout his life, and into his afterlife, screen representations have been a major facet of Warhol’s image. With a new Ryan Murphy series in the works for Netflix, Charlie Fox scans through the icon’s representations on screen.

HE’S NOT THERE

and easy to mimic that they could plau- sibly recognize him without knowing exactly who he is. He’s been a cartoon— remember him throwing a can of his favorite food at Homer on The Simpsons (1989—ongoing)? ‘Soup’s on, fat boy!’ He’s been played by David Bowie in Basquiat (1996); he’s been played by Crispin Glover in The Doors (1991); he’s been a very special guest on The Love Boat in 1985. This would obviously be amusing too, for somebody who was sending an imper- sonator (RIP Allen Midgette) in his place when asked to give boring college talks—trolling before trolling existed. And the trick-or-treat dimensions of all this acting and imitation, they’re some of the big questions for his art, too: What’s the difference between the copy and original? What’s real, anyway? (Spooky, the thought that he could be reduced to just a costume, as if he were nobody.) Of course, it’s not just Andy’s look, both singular and oddly familiar, that makes him an attractive proposition for actors. There’s also his catalog of unique behavioral tics: the spaced-out but

also pulled off the Warhol-style stunt of creating a shot-for-shot color remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960): the same … and yet not. And, in 2021, he staged a musical in Lisbon about Warhol’s life: it’s just called Andy . Meanwhile, the fun and touching thing about Bowie’s performance in Basquiat is the absence of anything snakelike or super-creepy. Julian Schnabel’s brash and fantastic magic-realist biopic of the legendary artist and downtown comet is, in part, about the strange and tender relationship between the two mythic artists, white and Black, which seemingly flowed from father-and-son to kinda romantic and back again. Bowie’s Warhol is as dreamy as a heavily medicated unicorn. And it’s not like Bowie was rely- ing on the acid-tongued testimony of people in the shadows at Studio 54—he’d been up close with Andy a lot. There’s awkward footage on YouTube of them hanging out, c.1972, where Bowie looks like a confused Pre-Raphaelite dame. In an interview in 1997 for Belgian televi- sion, Bowie said, ‘It was impossible to go anywhere [in New York] without seeing him.’ Quizzed about his performance, Bowie responded that all he wanted was to capture Warhol’s previously unac- knowledged ‘little boy lost’ vibe. Maybe my favorite Warhol imitation is more cryptic and sinister. For his video TRUE LIFE (2013), the artist Alex Da Corte dresses up as the rapper Eminem and wolfs down a bowl of Life cereal while staring at you like a psychopath. Where’s Andy? Da Corte is actually making an oblique cover version of a 1982 video by Jørgen Leth called Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger , which documents that exact thing. (He eats it in meticulous little nibbles.) It kind of melts your brain that Da Corte is proposing Eminem and Andy as twins—somebody who was at least messing around with homophobia in their act and a gay man—and yet … two hot blondes, white mommy’s boys from industrial areas. Through his scary drag act, Da Corte is showing you how Andy haunts pop culture. Will the real Andy Warhol please stand up? Even when you can’t see him, he’s there.

A friend of mine once dressed up as Andy Warhol for Halloween. I mean, it’s a classic: just throw together a silver wig, black shades and a leather jacket, and you’ve got Andy, readymade! (It pays to be an ectomorph, if you really wanna nail it.) I think having an after- life as a Halloween costume would tickle Andy a lot—not just in a camp way because it would put this weirdly feline gentleman from Pittsburgh in the same league as Hannibal Lecter or the Joker, nor because it’s oddly fitting for somebody nicknamed ‘Drella’ (as in half Dracula, half Cinderella) by his disciples. But because it’s also the best measure of success in America: once you’re a Halloween costume, you’re really (to use one of Andy’s favorite phrases) ‘up there’—a big star. For an artist who was extremely into fame, brand recognition and image, and the ways they might be playfully distorted or rendered ghost- like—look at his Marilyns decay!— oh, the whole thing’s perfect … What really assures this uncanny afterlife is that everybody’s seen some version of Andy on screen—so famous

playful drawl, that friendly ghost pres- ence, the vibe of spooked delight at the whole world: ‘Aw, wow!’ Guy Pearce’s Andy in Factory Girl (2006) is the best, technically, in terms of eerie verisimilitude to the, uh, origi- nal. He gets all the Cheshire Cat hints that something sinister, puppet-master- like, might be happening behind Andy’s shades, or that he’s just a cute oddball, or maybe there’s nobody home at all. Read into him what you want: ‘I’ll be your mirror’, as The Velvet Underground once sang. One of the magical elders of queer cinema, Gus Van Sant has made a bunch of movies with and about great blondes like Nicole Kidman ( To Die For , 1995) and Kurt Cobain ( Last Days , 2005). He was plotting a portrait-of- the-artist-as-a-young-man movie about Andy with River Phoenix before the actor died of an overdose in 1993. Watch River’s woozy, mumbled performance as Mike, the hustler in Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991), and you can imagine what he might have done with a young, out-of-focus Andy. In 1998, Van Sant

Bottom: David Bowie as Andy Warhol

in Basquiat , 1996 Courtesy: Everett Collection/ Bridgeman Images © Miramax

Charlie Fox is a writer and artist who lives in London, UK. He co-directed the video for ‘Long Road Home’ by Oneohtrix Point Never with Emily Schubert in 2020.

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES

An integral part of the exhibition in Aspen is Warhol’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ series (1975), in which the artist immortalized queer and transgender people of color. Some of their identities were lost, until a recent wave of research brought their stories back into history. Three writers offer personal reflections on the complex dynamics of this newly re-assessed body of work and the figures who inhabit it.

HIS AND HERS AND THEIRS

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

DEC 03 2021 – MAR 27 2022

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES

HARMONY HOLIDAY ON WILHELMINA ROSS

The Black trans women who sat for Warhol were paid US$50 each and never named. Ross’s photos dominated the series: she appeared in 52 Polaroids and 73 of the 268 canvases. My favorite image of her is a blunt Polaroid that features her in profile with perfect épaulement, just like a dancer. An elegant black and white scarf covers her head, she wears large pyrite-toned costume earrings, a jasper-colored matte lip, wispy mink lashes and otherwise soft makeup, while her left hand, manicured in gum-pink press-ons, is wrapped around her neck calmly, like she might strangle herself as an afterthought. There are a couple of versions: one with lips closed, one with them parted. In both, there’s a hint of wonder in her eyes. How do we

‘Randy Whorehall’ was the nickname given to Andy Warhol in a 1973 drag show called The Magic Hype . It was led by the Hot Peaches acting troupe, which included Marsha P. Johnson as well as the lesser-known queen Wilhelmina Ross, who named herself after the agency Wilhelmina Models and the singer Diana Ross. The show vamped and critiqued Warhol’s ‘Factory’, for being exactly that —an assembly line of doomed celebrities distracted by fleeting glamour. Two years after The Magic Hype debuted, both Ross and Johnson would ‘sit’— euphemism to conceal exploitation—for Warhol’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ series, for which he was commissioned by the art dealer Luciano Anselmino, at a rate of US$900,000, to find and photograph what Anselmino called ‘transvestites.’

understand that gleam? What vulner- ability does Ross’s exposed neck create, that she might transfer to her gaze? What guillotine might be echoed in the repeated snap and flash and snatch of her image? Does it feel like under-com- pensated prostitution, or a chance to protest through participation? You can’t render a diva anonymous forever. Though unnamed for years— the Warhol Foundation only published the list of all the sitters’ names in 2014— in the 1990s, someone came forward with Ross’s name and she stole the show back. In the music industry, artists some- times sign work-for-hire agreements on songs that generate millions, leaving them out of the profit, only to go back decades later and recapture those rights. Does Ross have that option? Does she

have any heirs or living family to ex- plore it for her? How much did the US$50 she earned to ‘sit’ (echoes of sit- ting in) cost her? Her images are selling for thousands still. I wonder how it feels to need Black subjects so desper- ately that you abandon them after their 15 minutes. The turnover rate, ladies and gentlemen, about as beautiful and artful as genocide. On the other hand, I gasp at the evidence of Ross’s glory in these photographs and feel vindicated.

Overleaf Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Marsha P. Johnson) , 1975 acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 50 × 40 in Above Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Wilhelmina Ross) , 1975 Polaroid, 4 1/4 × 3 3/8 in.

Photo: © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images Opposite Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen

(Wilhelmina Ross) , 1975 acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 50 × 40 in. Image and artwork licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York All images © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Harmony Holiday is a writer, archivist and multi-genre artist living in Los Angeles. She co-curates 2220arts.org. Her fifth volume of poems, Maafa , will be published this year by Fence Books.

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

DEC 03 2021 – MAR 27 2022

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES

COREY GRANT TIPPIN ON HELEN MORALES

It’s been 46 years since I got the call from the Factory asking me to recruit ‘drag queens’. I was told it was for a series of Polaroids Andy was shooting and I would be paid US$75 for each one I delivered. The subject would get US$50. There were no specific requirements other than fulfilling the description. Ronnie Cutrone, an assistant at the Factory who lived in the West Village, had already been asked to find participants for the series. He provided that neigh- borhood’s ubiquitous Marsha P. Johnson. Bob Colacello would slum it for a laugh at the Gilded Grape bar in Times Square, after a night of luxurious dinner parties with affluent notables. Once there, doing double duty, he managed to procure some willing models, whose identities remain unknown to me. I was no stranger to the Gilded Grape. Located on the west side of 45th Street and 8th Avenue, it was a generous space with a lively bar and a Sunday night drag show. The sidewalk outside was always busy with commotion and it was there that I first spotted Helen Morales. She was digging in her purse for either

cigarettes or chewing gum while simul- taneously speaking loudly in Spanish. Several friends surrounded her. She really had the gift of comedy without even trying to be funny. I approached and introduced myself. She asked me for a cigarette, which I didn’t have. I gave her the pitch and she did not seem suspicious. As she looked at me blankly through a thicket of false lashes, I ex- plained that nothing would be expected of her other than having her portrait taken by Andy Warhol. I asked for her address—she did not have a telephone number. I explained that I would come the next day, at midday, and pick her up. The US$50 fee would be paid that day. I wasn’t sure if she completely under- stood as her English was a bit limited. I assured her it was all on the level and again requested that she please be ready when I came to collect her. The following day, I arrived at the rooming house, an SRO building in the Times Square area. The door to the building was open and I could hear her voice coming from the end of the first- floor hallway. There she stood, and to

my amazement she was completely dressed, wearing a striped turtleneck with full face makeup and a large pair of pink-framed glasses perched on top of a short pixie wig. She and her friends were concocting a false tooth, fashioned from damp toilet paper and clear nail polish. She was drinking Coke from a bottle through a straw. She introduced me to one of her friends, whose name I couldn’t catch over the sound of the hairdryer drying the tooth. Once it was in place, we all made our way out onto the street. I grabbed a cab and we head- ed downtown to 33 Union Square West. There was a lot of chatter during the ride and, at one point, as we approached the building, Helen hurled her empty Coke bottle out of the cab window and I heard it smash on the street. Once inside, introductions were made and Andy began photographing Helen with his Polaroid Big Shot. Fred Hughes was present and we were both encouraging Helen’s moves, shouting directions, parodying a high-fashion shoot. Some of the photos were slightly blurred because Andy was laughing

so hard. During a lull in proceedings, while Helen was offered a drink, Andy shot some photos of her friend. I could hear the polite conversation between Helen and Fred. Fred was asking her who her favorite models were. ‘Veruschka and Marisa Berenson,’ was her reply. ‘Oh, they are friends of ours!’, Fred told her. Helen was an immediate success and was invited to return the next day—which she did, wearing a bouffant wig. I continued my search for more models and discovered Iris, Wilhelmina Ross and my close friend Michele Long. Andy lowered my fee to US$50. Did I ever say to the models I found for ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’, ‘Don’t worry, he’s a man in a wig, just like you’? Well no, but it wouldn’t have mattered, because Helen, Iris, Michele and Wilhelmina all shared one belief: that they deserved to be seen, adored and revered in the manner in which they presented themselves.

Above Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Helen/ Harry Morales) , 1974 Polaroid, 3 3/4 × 2 7/8 in.

Opposite Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Helen/ Harry Morales) , 1975 acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 14 × 11 in. Image and Artwork © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Corey Grant Tippin lives and works from his home in Black Rock, Bridgeport, CT.

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

DEC 03 2021 – MAR 27 2022

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES

TERENCE TROUILLOT ON BROADWAY AND MARSHA P. JOHNSON

avant-garde predilections. However, as Glenn Ligon judiciously points out in his essay ‘Pay It No Mind’—which ap- peared in the catalog for the exhibition ‘Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 2018—these prints ‘are portraits and not-portraits’ at the same time. While they are im- ages of real people, Ligon explains, they essentially lose that signifier through the dynamic use of color and contrast Warhol brought to his iconic silkscreen printing style in this series. The images of these women become something new, something outside of themselves, perhaps something beyond a trans

or queer identity: a process which might be considered, negatively, as flattening or, positively, as transcendence. For me, the series of pictures are both portraits and not-portraits because they immediately feel both per- sonal and impersonal. As Ligon states, Warhol was commissioned to make this series by the art dealer Luciano Anselmino; neither man knew these women well. In the finished works, there is a kind of fabulous undoing and remaking of the auras of these beautiful women: most notably Marsha P. Johnson, one of the fierce leaders of the Stonewall uprising. The preparatory Polaroids—quick snapshots with the sole

purpose of being references for the fin- ished works—to my mind, feel like more candid and intimate representations. In one, a woman by the name of Broadway —sans make-up, finger in mouth, wear- ing a large pearl necklace—gazes coyly at the camera. She exudes confidence. She feels present. She feels seen.

Andy Warhol’s silkscreen series ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ remains something of an outlier in the artist’s lauded career. These works, derived from Polaroids Warhol took of drag queens and trans women of color, who frequented New York’s Gilded Grape—a haunt for queers and queens just off Times Square—offer perhaps an ahead-of-its- time aesthetic towards trans visibility and self-determination (despite their overtly tongue-in-cheek, perhaps lam- entable, title). To some eyes, these colorful works can be easily read as a ferocious indica- tor of political consciousness—one that might seem distinct from Warhol’s

Above Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Broadway) , 1974 Polaroid, 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in. Image and Artwork © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Opposite Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Broadway) , 1975 acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 14 × 11 in. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Terence Trouillot is senior editor of frieze . He lives in New York.

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

DEC 03 2021 – MAR 27 2022

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES

Warhol in Public

From introspection to influencers: Dean Kissick explores how Warhol’s constructed persona paved the way for the ‘personal brand’

SELF-MADE

Opposite Andy Warhol with his birthday gifts at Halston’s studio, New York, August 1978 Photo: © Robin Platzer/ IMAGES/Getty Images

stars above but those on the screens, in the clubs and in the gutters. Warhol had a couple of unrealized money-making schemes that now seem remarkably prescient. He suggested selling Hollywood stars’ used underwear decades before the young ‘Bling Ring’ thieves tore through the Hollywood Hills in 2008–09, breaking into celebrities’ houses and stealing their clothes and ac- cessories, fixated on luxury goods bless- ed with the aura of Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan. He’d also proposed leas- ing out his superstars at US$5,000 each, long before influencers began hiring themselves out for walkthroughs at par- ties and events. Warhol understood the boundless- ness of our infatuation with fame because he shared it, and desperately wished to become famous himself. He anointed dozens of stars — superstars — during the Factory years: a few, like Nico and Edie Sedgwick, have remained famous, while others, such as Jack Smith, are now cult figures, but most, like Paul America, Pat Ast, Benedetta Barzini, Brigid Berlin, etc. are all but forgotten. ‘The super-

longer acts parts, but above all plays him or herself. The star no longer helps to sell a product of the entertainment industry, for now the star is the actual work, their persona is the work of art.’ It was in the program for this exhibition that Warhol—or, according to some, the museum’s director Pontus Hultén, channeling Warhol—suggested that, in the future, everybody would be world- famous for 15 minutes. That future is now the present, and new people trend every second of the day. Great art can not only foretell the future, but bring it about; with Warhol’s aphorism, one of the dogmas of modern life—that fame should be desired above all—was established. Self-absorbed individualism was a quality that could be celebrated. It was on Christmas Eve of the same year that Warhol made his quip, that Apollo 8 took the famous ‘Earthrise’ photograph of our blue planet —the first picture that showed how we’re all in this together, floating through space on a beautiful rock. But, at the same time, the world’s gaze was turning inwards; we were looking not at the

Andy Warhol’s Self-Portrait (1963–64), shows him hidden behind a pair of shades. This was the first time he ap- peared in his work. It’s a silkscreen print of a picture taken in an automatic photo booth in New York. A painting of a cheap commercial image, as much as a painting of himself. As a young boy in Pittsburgh in the 1930s, Warhol kept a scrapbook of photos of his favorite movie stars. He was obsessed with fame his whole life. In the 1950s, he was fascinated by celebrities like Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor, all of whom would later become subjects for his portraits. By the 1960s, Warhol and his Factory superstars were themselves elevating personality into an art form. Writing in Walter Pfeiffer: In Love With Beauty (2009), about the catalogue for Warhol’s retrospective at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in 1968 (which was mostly filled with photographs of the artist and his gang out on the town), curator and critic Martin Jaeggi ob- serves, ‘The superstar is a star for his own sake, just as the Hollywood star no

stars,’ writer and artist Gary Indiana has observed in his article in Harper’s from June 2020, ‘provided the exuberant “personality” that Warhol withheld, in a sense acting as surrogate Andys.’ Warhol was the bright, burning sun and they were just his entourage, there to enhance his allure and provide him with content, glamour and voices. He didn’t so much celebrate the superstars’ personae for their own sake as, through them, celebrate his own. They were stars for his sake; they shone for him. What the Factory produced was not superstars, but Andy Warhol. After graduating from college with a degree in commercial art, Warhol moved to New York and found employment as an illustrator, working on advertisements, shoe designs, book jackets and record sleeves. This was Manhattan in the 1950s —the golden age of Madison Avenue’s ‘Mad Men’, when the modern consumer age was being forged. When his career as an artist began to take off the following decade, he made Campbell’s Soup Cans , celebrating American mass-produced consumer culture, and Marilyn Diptych (both 1962), celebrating celebrity culture.

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES

Warhol in Public

“On social media we have all become public objects. We are all Andy Warhols. Life has become a performance.”

(From A to B and Back Again) , from 1975, he wrote, ‘A whole day of life is like a whole day of television. TV never goes off the air once it starts for the day and I don’t either. At the end of the day, the whole day will be a movie. A movie made for TV.’ Today this finds an echo in the saying, ‘My life is a movie.’ Or, ‘Last night was a movie.’ When people say this, they not only mean that they feel like they’re in a movie, but that our scripted, filmed, edited and broadcast lives, have become the dominant cultural form now—the one that’s replaced movies. On social media, we have all now become public objects. We are all Andy Warhols. Life has become a performance. If 20th-century post-war culture was driven by materi- alism, 21st-century culture is driven by narcissism. We don’t merely affirm our identities through brands and consumer objects but turn ourselves into brands and consumer objects. With this, Warhol lit the way—he transformed what art could be, and also helped transform how society would function (for the worse).

More significantly still, he made himself into a recognizable brand and a star. In this he’d likely had a lot of encourage- ment from his dealer Ivan Karp, of Leo Castelli Gallery, who had spent a long while persuading him to make that first series of self-portraits. As Carter Ratcliff notes in Andy Warhol (1983), Karp told the artist, ‘People want to see you. Your looks are responsible for a certain part of your fame—they feed the imagination.’ Warhol made those self-portraits, then bounded many steps forward and made himself into an artwork. He made everything he did into art: hanging out, making money, shopping, going to par- ties, climbing Manhattan’s social ladder, enjoying all of life’s new freedoms in the 1960s. He saw how society was changing, and placed himself right there at its cen- ter. Warhol came up with and perfected the idea of the artist as celebrity. Documenting society also became his way of navigating modern life. Writing in the same article, Indiana observed that in Bob Colacello’s Holy Terror: Andy

Warhol Close Up (1990), which focuses on the 1970s and ’80s, ‘Warhol often ap- pears forlornly isolated in rooms full of ostensible friends, clutching a tape recorder or camera like a magic wand, as if turning life into the memory of life without having to experience it.’ Does this sound familiar? Like how we live now? Documenting life, rather than experiencing it. ‘Sharing’ life with an imagined audience, rather than partak- ing of it with those in the same room as us. Imagining how what’s happening around you, or to you, will appear on the screen. Allowing reality to sink below the horizon. Speaking with Alfred Hitchcock in 1974, for Interview , Warhol remarked that his experience of being shot six years earlier had felt ‘like watching TV.’ He was able to view the world with great de- tachment—at least that’s how he chose to present himself. Having somebody try to kill you was like watching television, and living was like making television. In his book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Warhol is alleged to have once said, ‘I paint pictures of myself to remind myself that I’m still around.’ He turned his life into art but also used art as a way to construct himself, and reassure himself of his place in the world. But in these self-portraits, nothing is revealed. Unlike the great portrait painters of the past, who strove to express something of their personality and emotional state in their brushwork, Warhol designed an empty, impenetrable mask for himself. ‘If you want to know all about Andy Warhol,’ he said in a 1967 interview with Cahiers du Cinéma , ‘just look at the sur- face of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.’ The surface, the image was all that mattered. Though he made himself into a public object, he revealed nothing of his inner, private life. His was a mask that never slipped.

Above Andy Warhol and Jane Holzer at the opening of ‘Andy Warhol: Portraits of the 1970s’, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, November 20, 1979 Photo: © Marcia Resnick/ Getty Images

Dean Kissick is a writer based in New York. He publishes the column ‘The Downward Spiral’ on Spike Art every month.

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Warhol in Private SEEING Opposite Monica Majoli in her studio, Los Angeles, October 2021 All photographs: © Ye Rin Mok Following its premiere at Tate Modern in London, and versions in Cologne and Toronto, for this iteration of the Warhol exhibition the Aspen Art Museum invited artist Monica Majoli to reconceptualize its staging, utilizing personal artefacts and archival materials alongside artworks. In conversation with Simone Krug, Majoli explains her queer a ! nity for archives and her aim to reveal Warhol ‘as a concept and as a person’.

The deep dialogue that some artists engage in with other artists and their work is an understudied subject, and one that is important to me. Warhol is at once familiar and mysterious, so it was key for me to invite artist Monica Majoli to think about how to look at his work and life anew: to imbue this artist we think we know so well with a di ! erent kind of life. —Nicola Lees SIMONE KRUG ‘Andy Warhol: Lifetimes’ looks at Warhol’s life as a parallel to his work. So, I wanted to start by speaking about intimacy and the relationship that you’ve developed through the research stages of putting this exhi- bition together. We’ve talked about how his images are so familiar and so iconic that they’ve become distanced within a canon and yet, at the same time, Warhol is so present. MONICA MAJOLI I’ve always admired Warhol. I think of some of his work regularly—the early works from the 1960s, his early portraits of Jackie [Kennedy Onassis], etc. The ‘Death and Disaster’ series, which he began in 1963, was important for me because of its extremity. Also, the way it dealt with temporality and touch, and the mediated image. I discovered things about Warhol through the years, but I never did a deep dive into his life. I didn’t have precon- ceptions about who he was. I’d had a more abstract idea of him, through images of him, and I’ve always been much more focused on his work. I don’t recall ever having closely read his diaries before. Emphasizing archival materials seems like a way to make his life palpa- ble in a di ! erent way, so that it’s not all about the work that we know so well, but it’s about these materials around it that can make the work feel new again and connect to him, as an artist, but also as a person. SK We’ve done an immense amount of research through this process. What was surprising to you? MM The complexity of Warhol’s person- ality. You wonder how he reconciled certain things like being a devout Catholic with his relationship to sex—voyeurism, his homosexuality. When I read about him, part of what was surprising to me was how vulnerable, insecure and endearing he was. There was a sweetness to him; he was a romantic. There are interesting ways that Warhol operated and what I’m " nding compelling is how that doubles back or re # ects, somehow, his personality or his life story. It’s like a puzzle. There were so many di ! erent periods of his life and work and a multifaceted quality to his practice. But then there are also through-lines, and his personality is re- # ected in these di ! erent modes of making. SK To take a step backward: it’s such a curious gesture to ask an artist to re ! ect on Warhol—someone who changed American culture in major ways—and for them to reimagine the life and work of someone so iconic. This show comes to Aspen after a European and a Canadian run, and I wanted to know what changes or reconceptualizations felt necessary in presenting the show in the US? And what new perspectives were interesting to foreground for you as an American artist? MM I think there’s a general under- standing or comprehension of Warhol here in America. I’m assuming a

DOUBLE

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES

Warhol in Private

this major, life-altering event into your vision for the exhibition. And how Warhol’s life experiences and, perhaps, just his experience of being alive, un- fold throughout the galleries. MM There’s something sacri " cial about the way Warhol presents himself in the photograph taken by [Richard] Avedon after he’d been shot. The pose that he struck ... it’s not Saint Sebastian, exactly, but there was something very … SK Homoerotic. MM Homoerotic, yes. But Warhol was obsessed with beauty. And it’s so interesting that he presented his body that way such a short time after the shooting. He referred to his body as a Dior dress. It was so spliced up, so dramat- ically recon " gured by the shooting, and of course, by the surgery. I think that’s a fascinating aspect to Warhol, that he was both cloaked and, at the same time, so generous with his image. It was striking to see his body be- cause he cut a pretty glamorous " gure in the 1960s—a radical change from the nebbish adman he was initially. He transformed himself into this cool guy with leather jackets and dark glasses, pointy boots, striped shirts. It was a hardening in terms of his image. It brings to mind the observation by Diane Arbus, cited in an article in Art in America in 2005, about the gap between intention and e ! ect. Not knowing whether or not he was delusional about his self-image. Warhol underwent such a physical trans- formation over the years. It seems like there becomes a battle for self-preser- vation through the image that he was creating. I think that resonates today in a way that it might not have resonated earlier; there’s such a sense of image- consciousness now, in part due to social media. But when I look at images of Warhol through the years, I see someone struggling for a sense of peace within his self-image and, potentially, a kind of dysphoria. Coming back to your question about what was surprising—what struck me was that it took a while for the public in the US to catch on to Warhol’s great- ness. It wasn’t until the show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia that he was fully acknowl- edged as a phenomenon. SK In 1964, yes. MM There was a resistance to Warhol. Before that, he was better received in Europe than he was here. In the later years of his life, after the shooting, he started doing a di ! erent kind of work — Interview magazine, Warhol TV— basically working with popular culture directly. Not so much a response to pop culture, but actively creating the material of popular culture of the period. The shooting resulted in a radical change. Essentially, he had a second life and that second life took place di ! er- ently—it had to do with society people and their portraits, portraits of celebri- ties. Due to a desire for safety, his studio life changed drastically. It shifted from drug addicts, people on the fringe, any- body stopping in—somebody like Valerie Solanas—to a business model. It became a Brooks Brothers lifestyle that allowed him a renewed sense of safety. At the same time, I think you can see a through-line between his early work and his late work. And even between his commercial art and his late work, which became very commercial in so many ways. He became a product himself. SK He shifts from the 1960s to the 1970s; he really mirrors the way that

familiarity with American culture— that we have shared reference points to Warhol’s world. So, when I’m thinking about reconceptualizing, I’m doing so for an audience already knowledgeable in a particular way—even if it’s just with American culture, as a lived experience. Because of our ‘comfort level’ with Warhol and how he’s almost invisible to us, I’m interested in the things that might make him more visible and more surprising to an American viewer. I think this could be partly by looking at di ! erent periods of his work, allowing projection, and considering how it might be about common themes. For example, in the ‘queer galleries’, it was a lot of fun for me to work with that material. I was, in a way, inhabiting his position as a gay man of a certain era. Making associations freely and with pleasure— like Camou ! age [1986]—I enjoyed work- ing with that painting within a queer context. I’m not sure what that would be camou # age for; it’s certainly not going to disappear into anything. It’s so camp. But, to me, as a gay person, it also relates to the homoerotics of the hypermasculine motifs that are often circulating in the gay masculine world. And that was interesting concerning the idea of the closet. At the same time, it points to Warhol as a cipher, disappear- ing, as he often seemed to want to do,

into a recorder or a camera. SK To become a machine.

MM Become invisible, blank, a screen for projection. Become a mirror, which is what, in so many ways, he was. Then there are the ‘Oxidation’ paintings [1977 –78], which suggest sexual activity in a bathhouse, a kind of orgy on the canvas —also dealing, of course, with [Jackson] Pollock and abstract expressionism. Imbuing these works with sexuality was particularly interesting to me as a queer person. SK During the 1970s, homosexuality was considered politically charged and under threat in American society. It only became legal as late as 2003 in the US for two consenting adults of the same gender to have sex. So, Warhol was a dangerous " gure because he was making and showing this explicit erotic work of men. You’re bringing a lot of sexually charged material into this show and your practice pictures queer bodies, foregrounding homo- sexual experience. I wanted to ask if you could talk more about your pro- cess in organizing and sifting through all of this deeply homoerotic material and how you chose to present it? MM With this show, you don’t have to start at one point; you can start any- where. In many ways, it is a collage. Part of what was interesting to me was the potential for someone to enter the ‘queer galleries’ " rst and have Warhol’s queerness facing the street. The gallery with the ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ series [1975] is an immer- sive experience—with the spectator’s re # ection in deeply saturated, mirrored plexiglass, joining with the color-infused " lters that Warhol placed on his sub- jects, the drag queens. Also, Warhol him- self in drag projected large. There’s potential for confusion within this queer, transformative context. SK We’ve spoken so often of Warhol’s body and his vulnerability, his desiring gaze, his awkward features that he was really embarrassed about and the scars on his torso, following the 1968 shooting by Valerie Solanas. I wanted to ask how you thought about bringing

“The shooting resulted in a radical change. Essentially, he had a second life.”

ASPEN ART MUSEUM

DEC 03 2021 – MAR 27 2022

Warhol in Private

Opposite Alex Petalas in the library at The Perimeter, London, September 2020, holding Sarah Lucas’s Tit Teddy (2012).

All photographs: Kuba Ryniewicz

American society and American culture change. MM That’s true. SK And it’s curious because 1968, 1969, those years of such dramatic global shifting—it’s this moment in history that he’s mirroring. MM That’s so true. US Senator Robert Kennedy was killed three days after Warhol was shot. The 1960s, ’70s and ’80s were so wildly di ! erent to one another in terms of culture, and I might even say in terms of celebrity. The product endorsement—no one held a candle to Warhol regarding exploiting that opening. He became the quintessential artist in mainstream American culture. It was as if he became a network. SK Do you think it was transgressive that he straddled so many di # erent worlds: true mainstream pop culture, a television show like The Love Boat [1977–90], advertising? MM I think it’s unusual for an artist to take on the kind of authority that he gave himself. That’s a radical and transgressive thing to do. To produce content for mass consumption is not usually how artists imagine their role in society; I think artists imagine them- selves as critics of a larger culture. SK Also to have no limits. MM And have no limits, exactly. To imagine that a very idiosyncratic vision might be understood by many people or should be a part of daily popular culture. That’s a fascinating approach. When you watch Warhol TV, you see how di ! erent his version of cable television might be

from the average cable show or mainstream television.

Above and opposite Exhibition planning and archival material in Monica Majoli’s studio, Los Angeles, October 2021

SK So many of the things Warhol did as an artist are de " ning features of American culture: how he saw the world, how he used pop culture as his medium. It’s impossible to decouple popular culture from Warhol’s interpretation of it. For you, is this a challenge, a curse or helpful? How did you approach this in your reconceptualization and reimagining of all of the exhibition material? MM It is all of the above. The thing about Andy Warhol is, he’s too much to wrap your brain around. His impact has been so enormous, so dispersed. He rede " ned the way we see reality. How many times a day do you hear the quote about everyone being famous for 15 minutes? Even though that may be a quotation from someone else attrib- uted to him, he decided to make it his own. An interesting thing about Warhol is how he gave himself enormous author- ity and, at the same time, he also wasn’t very particular about authorship. So, when you ask if it is a curse, I would say that it’s hard to get your bearings within an exhibition of this magnitude and with an artist of this magnitude. It’s almost like his in # uence has sunk into the soil of our country. Things have grown out of it. He has in " l- trated various ways in which we think about the country so thoroughly that it’s hard to separate out American culture from Warhol. It’s hard to separate the 1950s from Warhol and how we

“It’s hard to get your bearings within an exhibition of this magnitude and with an artist of this magnitude. It’s almost like his influence has sunk into the soil of our country. It’s hard to separate out American culture from Warhol.”

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