PART ONE:
AN ORIGINAL ANDY WARHOL MARILYN LANDS BRIEFLY AT MIR!
“Of all the painters working today in the service—or thrill—of a popular iconograph, Andy Warhol is probably the most single-minded and the most spectacular. At his strongest—and I take this to be the Marilyn Monroe paintings—Warhol has a painterly competence, a sure instinct for vulgarity (as in his choice of colors) and a feeling for what is truly human and pathetic in one of the exemplary myths of our time.”
A WEEK IN CHICAGO
Particularly synchronous, near magical moments this young month thus far made me feel as if I must be living right, or at least living in the right city. This is the sort of week which begins listening to Jonathan Richman’s song “Higher Power” on my headphones while the El train rocks on the tracks and my great city goes by, frame by train-window-frame, a rocky reel making me feel that it’s “magic” (for me) that Chicago and I “got together”—Richman lyrics: “ It's magic It's magic the way we got together/ It's magic It's justice, it's grace/ It's magic It's magic, no not at random/And there must be a higher power some place” (Richman I, Jonathan).
Jonathan Richman
The week goes to sleep with a strange little mystical moment on the 147 bus on a Sunday afternoon—but more about that later in this series.
First, a client recently sent us an original Andy Warhol silkscreen painting (pictured above) to appraise! I set forth to build a little mountain of Andy Warhol reference materials, checked out from the one and only Harold Washington Chicago Public Library (sort of like a living factory of Warholesque input and output), realize that Patti Smith has a new book out, which centers on her fruitful relationship with Mapplethorpe, Just Kids, (http://www.pattismith.net/wegottofly.html#justkids), relating excellent stories about New York institutions such as Max’s Kansas City in which “the Andy Warhol contingent held court,” realize she is actually giving a reading and book signing at the library (wow!),
Patti Smith
spend the many hours beforehand pouring through old New York news about Edie Sedgwick,
Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick
Lou Reed, Eastern European religious iconography, Warhol’s silkscreening process, witness a 4 hour Warhol documentary deep into the early morning hours, all the while flipping through Warhol’s hilarious and touching diary (cut down from its original 20,000 page breadth by his long-time assistant and writing partner Pat Hackett), write to a former art history professor, and just in general immerse myself in John Cale’s “Big White Clouds” and Patti Smith’s “Birdland” (one of my very favorite songs, which, incidentally, I asked her about at the reading; she identified it as “the portal into the coming of punk rock ”).
Patti Smith at her reading and book signing in Chicago
* * *
I think March will be a terrific month, especially since I will be spending it in my blog entries meditating upon one of the most influential artists of the 20th century—Andy Warhol. Visit our blog site again soon! Next week, I will chat a bit more about the exciting New York artists orbiting about Max’s Kansas City in the 1960s, and unveil the lovely and fascinating provenance of the original Warhol silkscreen painting currently in our midst…
Written and Researched by Jessica Savitz
Principal Appraiser: Farhad Radfar, ISA AM
307 N. Michigan Avenue, Suite 308
Chicago, IL 60601
(312) 814-8510
Works Cited:
Danto, Arthur C. Andy Warhol. Yale University Press: New Haven, 2009.
Hackett, Pat. The Andy Warhol Diaries. Warner Books: New York, 1989.
Richman, Jonathan.”Higher Power.” I, Jonathan. Rounder, 1992.
Smith, Patti. Just Kids. HarperCollins Publishers: New York, 2010.
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