Andy Warhol | The New York Observer

Cowles and Consonance: On Eve of Retirement, Glam Gallerist Recalls a Lovely Life

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:36:02 -0400

On Saturday, June 27, Charles Cowles will close the art gallery he has owned for 30 years. “I joke with my friends that I better start learning to play solitaire,” he told the Transom in his signature growl during a recent visit to his immaculate, light-drenched, 9,000-square-foot Soho loft.

Mr. Cowles has covered one long wall of the loft with photographs, arranged “semi-biographically,” he said rather than in any kind of linear narrative. They...

Times Does Warhol Doing Cuomo; Warhol Already Did Cuomo in 1985

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:48:31 -0500

Readers of the print edition of The New York Times—they're out there somewhere—were treated to a bit of creative whimsy in the art accompanying Danny Hakim's A1 story about former New York Governor Mario Cuomo's unwillingness to pose for an official portrait.

To illustrate the story, the paper used four imaginary portraits by illustrator Thomas Fuchs done in the signature styles of Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Robert Crumb. (The images...

Carrie Kania Makes Harper Perennial Clubhouse for Losers

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:33:54 -0500

Most of the people who came to Camilla Morton’s book party at the Diane von Furstenberg showroom last Thursday night appeared to be models or DJs or photographers. Giselle Bündchen arrived in skintight leather pants. A man with a waxed handlebar mustache wandered about wearing glasses. One young lady had on an American Apparel leotard and platform heels that resembled nothing so much as toaster ovens.

Thirty-seven-year-old publisher Carrie Kania, who recently put...

Tom Freston Takes Warhol's Old East Side Place Off the Market

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:32:28 -0400

Former Viacom chief executive Tom Freston has apparently taken his townhouse at 57 East 66th Street off the market, according to the Wall Street Journal. He had listed the former Andy Warhol home in the spring for $38.5 million, only to chop that asking price to $35 million.

Mr. Freston, according to a 2000 Observer article, bought the neoclassical townhouse for $6.5 million, moving there from a Tribeca penthouse after about $100,000 worth of...

Crosstown Bus

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:51:37 -0400

I was limping around the sticky town looking for a pair of Sperry topsiders because the cheap sneakers I had bought were giving me blisters. At Union Square, secretly eyeing Filene’s Basement, I decided to spend my limited disposable income on flowers instead of raiment, so I headed West to Chelsea Market.

On the crosstown bus I sat down next to a little fat woman who immediately asked...

Fashion Roundup: Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone's Vacation with Kate Moss; Eva Mendes' Topless Ad

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:04:39 -0400

Marc Jacobs and boyfriend Lorenzo Martone—whom we still think are not married—vacationed in Ibiza with Kate Moss and her mom, Linda. Ms. Moss's daughter, Lila Grace, was on hand to snap the party photos. [Fashionologie via The Cut]

Diane von Furstenberg is teaming up with the Andy Warhol Foundation to create a resort 2008 and pre-spring 2009 collections of swimwear and other pieces featuring the artist's prints. [WWD]

Eva...

Was Valerie Solanas The Genius Behind the Internet?

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:39:41 -0400

Today's Los Angeles Times features an op-ed by A.S. Hamrah about the 40th anniversary of Valerie Solanas' assassination attempt on Andy Warhol. (We stumbled upon this via The New York Times' Opinionator blog.)

Ms. Solanas, a playwright who formed a group called S.C.U.M. ("Society for Cutting Up Men") and wrote its manifesto (she is also widely credited as being the group's only member), shot Mr. Warhol in his office. After summarizing the...

Warhol, Porn and Vuitton

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:18:38 -0400

The most interesting thing about Takashi Murakami, whose paintings, sculptures and merchandise are the subject of “© Murakami” at the Brooklyn Museum, is that he’s above shame. To know shame is to realize there are standards of behavior that, when bent or broken, cause remorse or, at least, self-awareness of having done wrong. Shame is unknown in Mr. Murakami’s rarefied orbit: Art is an adjunct of capital. There’s no second thought given to this...

Warhol Comes to the Jewish Museum This Spring

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:10:00 -0500

There's nothing like some colorful pop art to get you amped for spring. The Jewish Museum seems to know this. On March 16, the museum will unveil Warhol's Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered, a follow up of sorts to Mr. Warhol's somewhat controversial 1980 series, Ten Portraits of the Twentieth Century, which includes images of Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Albert Einstein, Golda Meir and Sigmund Freud, among others. Ten Portraits Reconsidered features the primary source...

Dorothy Podber, New York Art Scene's 'Wild Child,' Dead at 75

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:34:26 -0500

Dorothy Podber shot a bullet through a few of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe silk screen paintings, re-enacted the shower scene from Psycho with artist Ray Johnson on the streets of Manhattan, and ran an illegal abortion referral service from her apartment. Even Mr. Warhol called her "too scary." She was a "wild child," indeed, of the 1950's and 60's as The New York Times writes this morning. She died of "natural causes" in her...

New York Photographer Finds Warhol Self-Portrait?

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:40:38 -0500

A photographer may have discovered an experimental self-portrait drawn by Andy Warhol. While rummaging through some framed paintings and drawings at an estate sale this fall, New York photographer Addison Thompson saw a drawing that looked like a Warhol from the 1950s. He sent an image of the sketch to a famous artist and friend of Mr. Warhol, who said it looked like the real deal. But Mr. Thompson won't be able to confirm...

Pop Goes Andy Warhol Endowment: $16.25 M. in 2007 Makes for $240 M. Stash

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:50:29 -0500

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has built a $240 million endowment, with its net gain from sales at $16.25 million last year, according to its 20th anniversary report on its finances and philanthropy. Mr. Warhol, who died at 58 in 1987, left all his possessions to the New York-based foundation “for the advancement of the visual arts.” President Joel Wachs declined to disclose the number of paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings...

Zac Posen's Metaphysical Fashion: Outfits Within Outfits

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:24:21 -0500

Last night, at the Neue Galerie's 6th annual Winter Gala, Zac Posen talked to us about art. While a number of art-world folks are abuzz over the current, exploding art market, the 27-year old fashion phenom said he's not impressed with the way things are going.

"Nothing new has happened really since Andy Warhol," he told The Daily Transom, adding that Damien Hirst, the British creator of...

Andy Warhol Passes On His Fashion Jean

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:43:32 -0500

What is it with Andy Warhol and jeans already? A Madrid-based fashion label called Pepe Jeans London has just announced plans to create a collection of clothes and accessories inspired by the posthumous Prince of Pop. But this isn’t the first time a jean brand has been created with Mr. Warhol in mind.

Last winter, during what seemed like the final gasp of a Warhol-mania...

Sara Vilkomerson’s Guide to This Week’s Movies: Hey, Look! It’s Billy Walsh!

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:23:57 -0500

So here’s something we don’t understand: There’s not a whole lot going on in TV-land (though we still support you, writers!), and yet people still aren’t going to the movies in the money-spending holiday-season droves that studios would like. The budget-busting Golden Compass was No. 1 this weekend, but its $26 million is not considered a good haul for what New Line spent on those fightin’ Polar Bears. (It’s doing much better overseas. …...

Warhol's Elizabeth Taylor Painting Sells for $23.5 Million

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:44:59 -0500

Sarah Jessica Parker, Marc Jacobs and Elizabeth Hurley all showed up to the Christie's auction last night, witnessing Andy Warhol's "Liz" painting sell for $23.5 million, according to The New York Times. The 40-inch-square painting, one from a series of 13, originally belonged to Hugh Grant, and will now be passed on to an anonymous bidder.

Although “Liz” sold below its estimate, it fetched the second-highest price of the evening. The entire sale produced...

Speech! Speech! Michael Bloomberg Doles Out Art Awards.

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:30:10 -0400

Awards were given out at the Americans for the Arts 2007 National Arts Awards last night, and speeches were made. Sitting down for dinner in Cipriani 42nd Street's massive main hall, guests dressed in black-tie attire-Jeff Koons among them-were surrounded by billboard-sized cloth screens covered with images of Andy Warhol's iconic poppies. Warhol was the official featured artist of the evening.

Honorees included Wallis Annenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Anna Deavere Smith, and, as a sort-of...

The Guggenheim Asks: Was Andy Warhol 'A Boring Fuck'?

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:00:07 -0400

Last week, many friends and patrons of the Guggenheim Museum found lurking in their stacks of mail an uncovered postcard sent from the Upper East Side institution.

The card’s label side seems innocent enough. “THE WORST OF WARHOL: A ROUNDTABLE,” it reads, just above a list of speakers' and moderators' names and all the pertinent event information for an upcoming museum talk on Tuesday, October 23. Flipping...

Chelsea Girls Are Back ... in 16 MM!

Tue, 22 May 2007 14:45:45 -0400

Last week at Christie’s, an anonymous bidder picked up Andy Warhol’s Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) for $71.7 million—more than four times the highest sum previously commanded by a Warhol painting at auction. Whoever the mystery buyer was, he seems to have come down with the latest case of Warhol fever, which broke out earlier this year—the 20th anniversary of the artist’s death—with Factory Girl, a throng of new books like Andy...

Barbara of Beekman Place

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 20:00:00 -0400

Tucked away in a cul-de-sac on East 50th Street, One Beekman Place was built by the Rockefellers in 1930; previous residents include playboy Aly Khan; William J. Donovan, head of the O.S.S. under Franklin Roosevelt; and game-show mogul Mark Goodson. It’s very difficult to get into the building, but once you do, it’s almost impossible to get kicked out. Unless you’re Huntington Hartford, the A&P heir who lived in the penthouse in increasing squalor...

The New Yorkerator

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:00:00 -0500

Halo’d Ground! So, you’re a geek. So, you’d rather spend your hours rocking Gears of War in your Superman Underoos than painting the city pink in your Jimmy Choos (or whatever the kept ladies are wearing these days). That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a date from time to time. And for that occasion, there is NYCLAN, the new, subterranean video-game Oz that has been luring gamers out of their bedrooms and into the...

The New Yorkerator

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:00:00 -0500

Factory Girl Is All About Andy

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:00:00 -0500

A frosty week in mid-winter when nothing of any major importance is opening may be the perfect in-between time to play catch-up. I wrote about the powerful German film The Lives of Others last week, so my excitement has dimmed momentarily. In the interim, the thin, superficial docudrama Factory Girl, about the five minutes of fame squandered by Andy Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick in the 1960’s, is making a brief, forgettable appearance. Clumsily directed...

Madelyn Molly Turner

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Oct. 21, 2006

5:56 a.m. 6 pounds, 12 ounces St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital It’s a … CosmoGirl! The teen magazine’s deputy editor, Chandra Czape Turner, marked the onset of contractions by heading to the office, having breakfast at Norma’s and getting an eyebrow wax. “The whole time I was doubting myself,” said Ms. Turner, 32, also the founder of Ed2010, a networking Web site for aspiring journalists. “When you go into labor, especially your first...

Madelyn Molly Turner

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Oct. 21, 2006 5:56 a.m. 6 pounds, 12 ounces St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital It’s a … CosmoGirl! The teen magazine’s deputy editor, Chandra Czape Turner, marked the onset of contractions by heading to the office, having breakfast at Norma’s and getting an eyebrow wax. “The whole time I was doubting myself,” said Ms. Turner, 32, also the founder of Ed2010, a networking Web site for aspiring journalists. “When you go into labor, especially your first time, no one...

I Was a Male Warhol Bride! Pop Go Barneys' Windows

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 19:00:00 -0500

I feel that Andy Warhol spoke for all of us when he said: “You can’t take a princess to dinner and order a cookie for starters no matter how much you crave one. People expect you to eat protein and you do, so they won’t talk. If you decided to be stubborn and ordered the cookie, you’d wind up having to talk about why you want it and your philosophy of eating a cookie...

I Was a Male Warhol Bride! Pop Go Barneys’ Windows

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 19:00:00 -0500

All the Warhol Diarists, Cashing In 20 Years After Andy; Note To Self: Don't Die!

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 07:17:42 -0400

"I was David Hockney's assistant in the 80s," said Charlie Scheips, the freelance curator and New York social diarist. "And I knew Andy through that venue and, uh, I said, "This is a time capsule about a time in life when I was a young man and I wanted to..." "Yeah, yeah, yeah," snapped a man approaching the table at which Mr. Scheips was seated. He was speaking to a woman spewing endless instructions...

Quick! Buy the Andy Warhol Estate!

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 11:07:53 -0500

Joey Dallesandro, Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey. Today's New York Post brings us tales of bidding wars over Hamptons rentals for the coming summer. YOU know what they say about the early bird? His $50,000 is going to rent him a better Hamptons summer house than yours is. "What you're seeing [now] for $50,000 is better than what you see in April," says broker Angela Boyer-Stump of Hampton County Real Estate. [...] "I am currently in...

Neighborhood White Boy Stalks Billion-Footed Beast

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Who is Eddie Hayes?

If you have to ask, he hasn’t done his job. Mouthpiece, the title of his lively, entertaining and utterly unapologetic autobiography, makes him sound like a flak, but he’s actually a lawyer—a “big-city lawyer,” he likes to say—with a colorful history of high-profile clients who come to him because, as he repeatedly insists, he gets things done: “You have a problem, you call me, I’m there.” Hotheaded,...

Neighborhood White Boy Stalks Billion-Footed Beast

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Who is Eddie Hayes? If you have to ask, he hasn’t done his job. Mouthpiece, the title of his lively, entertaining and utterly unapologetic autobiography, makes him sound like a flak, but he’s actually a lawyer—a “big-city lawyer,” he likes to say—with a colorful history of high-profile clients who come to him because, as he repeatedly insists, he gets things done: “You have a problem, you call me, I’m there.” Hotheaded, tenacious and...

What Are the Rules? Glimcher Exhibition Stated Aesthetic

Sun, 10 Apr 2005 20:00:00 -0400

The exhibition called Logical Conclusions: 40 Years of Rule-Based Art, organized by Marc Glimcher for the PaceWildenstein Galleries, has come and gone, but it has left in its wake an encyclopedic catalog that's likely to remain a standard work of reference for a long time. In the near term, however, it's certain to provoke controversy and dismay. Among its many claims on our attention, this remarkable study raises the question of whether the "rule-based"...

Power Punk: Leo Koenig

Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:00:00 -0500

New Old-World art dealer; gallery royalty; young fogey

"Leo is 26 going on 40," said collector Norman Dubrow, 76, gesturing toward Leo Koenig, a tall, fresh-faced man dressed in a fogeyish brown corduroy suit. One of Mr. Koenig's artists, Eric Parker, agreed. "He's a gentleman's art dealer," he said. "He's not trying to be hip." Mr. Dubrow then paid Mr. Koenig his highest compliment: "He has an eye," he said. It was a cold...

Monster Minimalism: Dia Beacon Museum A Vast, Ascetic Folly

Sun, 14 Sep 2003 20:00:00 -0400

Almost four decades have passed since an exhibition called Primary Structures (1966) was organized at the Jewish Museum in New York. For many of the people who saw it, Primary Structures was their first encounter with what was soon to be called Minimalism-an art so radically denuded of embellishment, complexity or any obvious visual appeal that it instantly posed a daunting linguistic challenge for artists, critics and curators who were attempting to "sell" this...

Hurry Up, Please, It's Time: Banishing Fame's 16th Minute

Sun, 08 Jun 2003 20:00:00 -0400

Of all the things Andy Warhol left behind when he died in 1987, the most enduring are the aphorisms. The paintings, the films and the innumerable other objects stamped with the Warhol logo lack the bite of the maxims. Delivered with his signature deadpan affect, Warhol's pronouncements divulge an awareness-never a condemnation-of the shortcomings of contemporary culture, not excluding his own contribution to it. "Art is what you can get away with" is the...

Art World's Secret Exposed: It's All About Filthy Lucre

Sun, 01 Jun 2003 20:00:00 -0400

I Bought Andy Warhol, by Richard Polsky. Harry N. Abrams, 256 pages, $24.95.

This is a book about art that has virtually nothing to do with art. It's really a primer about basic economics-supply and demand, the unassailable power of the marketplace, and greed and avarice, the twin engines that drive so much good old-fashioned American enterprise. The author, Richard Polsky, is an art-world veteran: Since 1984, he's been both a gallery owner and...

Eight Day Week

Sun, 16 Feb 2003 19:00:00 -0500

Wednesday 12th

How do nice girls grow up to be fashion mavens? You start 'em young-say, with ELLEgirl magazine! Tonight, the magazine has a bash in ABC Studios, on that catwalk we call West 44th Street, with music by rapper Eve (the one with the paws tattooed on her, uh, apples). If you're craving seconds, back on the fashion front, Anna Sui (bohemian, "ironic") exhibits her fall offerings...

Updike Picks Up His Brush, Whips Off a Dazzling Portrait

Sun, 17 Nov 2002 19:00:00 -0500

Seek My Face , by John Updike. Alfred A. Knopf, 288 pages, $23.

The premise of Seek My Face is clean and powerful, like a canvas by Barnett Newman: An old woman, a painter who has lived a full life (three husbands, among them two "men of genius"), is being interviewed by a young woman, a journalist. The older woman, the artist, is the wide field of color; the younger woman, with her tape...

Community Boards

Sun, 04 Aug 2002 20:00:00 -0400

Former Barneys Home to Enter Next Life As Himalayan Art Museum

Andy Warhol, who used to dress the windows at Lord & Taylor before becoming the poster child of the Pop Art revolution, once made the observation that "when you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums." With this casual remark, Warhol foreshadowed the emergence of today's culture of mass consumption, in which boy bands are created, packaged and marketed with the...

Mommy, Andy and Me

Sun, 13 May 2001 20:00:00 -0400

You are the fruit of her loins, and yet your relationship with this woman is degenerating into a rage-filled psychodrama. Mother's Day is looming, and all you can think about is what kind of sentence you'd be handed down if you strangled that hypercritical bitch during your mother-and-daughter day of beauty at Janet Sartin. You are in real danger of using the C-word on Sunday the 13th when you take her to the $72...

Half-Price Hamptons: No Meg Ryan in '01; Maybe Howard Stern

Sun, 06 May 2001 20:00:00 -0400

IN A RENTER-FRIENDLY MARKET, PRICES ARE GETTING SLASHED By this time last year, most of the prize properties in the Hamptons had been claimed for the summer for record-breaking prices: Lee Radziwill's oceanfront East Hampton estate would get $500,000 from leveraged-buyout giant Thomas Lee, and Bryan Bantry's Goose Creek, on Georgica Pond, with a 100-seat screening room and a beauty salon, would get about $30,000 a week from former record executive Ted Field....

Will Write for Merlot: The N.Y. Curse

Sun, 25 Feb 2001 19:00:00 -0500

A major magazine that I write for every month, and to which I am undyingly and contractually loyal, happened to be working up a business scandale piece on a company that I happened to have done some work for. Would I please, my dear editor entreated, talk to the reporter doing the story?

Well, O.K., I said, being a sport and generally in the service of truth. I don't usually talk about my clients,...

February 7 - February 14

Sun, 11 Feb 2001 19:00:00 -0500

Wednesday 7th

He's Alda't! The only thing we wanted in that wretched Mel Gibson Helen Hunt vehicle What Women Want was Alan Alda, who played their boss. We fear that Mr. Alda's male archetype (1970's, sensitive yet masculine, earnest yet funny) may be lost forever, replaced by men who favor shiny messenger bags, shiny clompy black shoes and a bit too much hair product . Anyway, Mr. Alda is sob! not yet confirmed for...

A Farewell to Dapper Fred Hughes: He Oversaw Andy's Factory Empire

Sun, 28 Jan 2001 19:00:00 -0500

The memorial at the Frank E. Campbell funeral home on Tuesday, Jan. 16, was strangely ungrand for a man as grand and theatrical as Frederick W. Hughes. For whatever reasons, Mr. Hughes' Texan mother, Jennie Hughes, his brother Thomas, and his sister Mary-Beth Hansard, had decided to very quickly and quietly call viewing hours for between 7 and 9 p.m., two days after Mr. Hughes, at age 57, died at home from complications resulting...

Warhol's Rife Photos Augur Our Crummy Era

Sun, 28 Jan 2001 19:00:00 -0500

It was Barbara Rose, writing in New York magazine some 30 years ago, who described the late Andy Warhol (1928-87) as "the wealthy and fabulous queen of the New York art and fashion world," and spoke of his studio, which he called the Factory, as "The Mirror of Our Time." Well. It was certainly a mirror–or perhaps a photo shoot–of a certain segment of New York upper bohemia in the 1960's, and Ms. Rose...

The Way MoMA 2000 Ends: No Bang, Big Whimper

Sun, 08 Oct 2000 20:00:00 -0400

As I was walking through the various subdivisions of Open Ends the other day, trying to find something worth looking at, what came to mind again and again were those once-famous lines from T. S. Eliot's poem, "The Hollow Men":

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. Open Ends is the hapless title that has been conferred...

Return to Montauk: Brant, Schnabel, Beard Frolic in Andy Land

Sun, 25 Jun 2000 20:00:00 -0400

POLO-PLAYING PUBLISHER RENTS WARHOL'S COMPOUND In 1972, broker Tina Fredericks, who owns her own realty firm in East Hampton, showed Andy Warhol, his partner Paul Morrissey and a carload of friends around the Hamptons in search of a summer home. Warhol found the area dreadfully boring, but when they drove into Montauk, he perked up and dropped $220,000 on a secluded 25-acre oceanfront compound with a main house and four cottages. In the...

Storr Raids the Icebox at Bumpy MoMA 2000 Show

Sun, 26 Mar 2000 19:00:00 -0500

Museumgoers, fasten your seat belts! Get out the Dramamine, follow a light diet, and prepare for moments of dizziness and revulsion. For with the opening of Part 1 of "Making Choices," the second cycle of the MoMA 2000 exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, you are in for a very bumpy ride. And there are more bumps, gyrations, digressions, free falls and what Robert Storr, one of the curators of the bizarre exercise...

MTV President Splurges on Warhol's 66th Street Mansion

Sun, 23 Jan 2000 19:00:00 -0500

Andy Warhol lived at 57 East 66th Street from 1974 until his death in 1987, dwelling there longer than anyone who has since tried to call the town house home–first a Spanish family and then an American gentleman. Maybe they were spooked by the secret trap door in the master bedroom or tales of the sordid findings of the appraisers who scoured the place after Warhol's death: green boxes of wings stacked near a...

What Sculpture Might Have Looked Like on Day 1

Sun, 12 Dec 1999 19:00:00 -0500

One of the casualties of culture, brought about by the ascendance of the Dadaist esthetic, is the devaluation of artistic tradition. For many contemporary artists, tradition is not a vital fund of inspiration and a continuum with which to be engaged. It is, instead, a grab bag of stylistic markers to be exploited at will. This phenomenon-the tradition, as it were, of no tradition-has resulted in a scene notable for its dearth of historical...