Andy Warhol: Red
Books
Pace MacGill
32 E 57, 9th fl
New York, NY 10022
212-759-7999
May 13 to July 2, 2004
By BRIAN APPEL
Andy Warhol Paloma
Picasso 1973 [from Red Book #227]
Polaroid Type 107 black and white photograph, 4-1/4 x 3-3/8 inches
Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York © The Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts
The "Red Books"
offer a front row seat to Andy Warhol's 60's and 70's in what has to
be the most intimate glimpse into this art phenomenon's magical life
yet. Culled from well over one hundred little red photo books each containing
thirteen to twenty-two unique Polaroid Type 107 black and whites or
Polacolor 108's exposed between 1969 and 1975, the eleven albums in
this show provide 203 intimate, snap-shot-style images of Warhol's fabulously
eclectic world of Hollywood movie and TV personalities, rock stars,
art celebrities and the international jet set, many never before seen.
The brain child of Peter McGill with Tim Hunt and Vincent Freemont from
the Andy Warhol Foundation, this installation presents the exciting
period after Warhol had recovered from the assassination attempt that
almost took his life through the early, brilliant days of his prescient
celebrity/art/culture magazine, INTERVIEW.
Unlike the portraits
that he shot as sources for his commissioned silkscreen paintings, these
images were taken in a more improvised and affectionate way with the
subjects being friends at play at "The Factory," including
Larry Rivers, Brigid Berlin, and Paloma Picasso; at his summer retreat
in Montauk (Anthony and Lee Radziwell, Caroline and John Kennedy Jr.,
Peter Beard, Paul Morrissey); at the many lunches while overseas (Marisa
Berenson, Cheryl Tiegs, Sylvia Miles, Pat and Michael York, Jed Johnson,
Joe Dallesandro, Fred Hughes) or just hanging out and responding in
kind with the likes of Jack Nicholson, John Lennon and Yoko, Terry Southern,
William Burroughs, Bianca Jagger, Mick Jagger, Roger Vadim, Rudolph
Nureyev, Joni Mitchell, Lorne Greene, Tony Curtis, Rex Reed, Jan Michael
Vincent, Richard Chamberlain, Lucie Arnaz, Rona Barrett, Ann Miller,
and David Bowie. Many of the images are signed and dedicated, "To
Andy Love", "For Andy, a Great Talent", or "To Andy
Peace," while each album is themed around a certain event or a
particular personality.
Warhol's special
emphasis on the figure, the cut of the clothes, hair styles, jewelry;
his attention to all the coding devices that people use to express their
personality and rank in society, and his fawning, yet irreverent way
with people allowed him to not only get in close to take unposed pictures
but also allowed the viewer to study in an almost anthropological way
the truly gifted artists of American culture at the time. Anticipating
by at least a decade and a half the type of reporting that would become
ubiquitous on the news stands with "US", "STAR"
and "PEOPLE", and on the TV set with "Entertainment Tonight"
and "Extra", Warhol, as usual, anticipated the shift in America's
obsessions and fantasies.
I
Andy Warhol Mick
Jagger 1975 [from Red Book #237]
Polacolor Type 108 photograph, 4-1/4 x 3-3/8 inches
Courtesy Pace/MacGill
Gallery, New York © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
It's important to
note that these images were produced prior to Andy's falling in love,
circa 1975, with the Olympus point-and-shoot 35mm camera which produced
the black and white negatives that could create infinite copies; this
show is filled with only the original, one-of-a-kind unique color and
black and white Polaroids, some with Andy doodles on the emulsion, that
are here and will turn up nowhere else. Warhol collectors get not only
brilliantly intimate images of the icons of the day as filtered through
the Warhol sensibility (whatever happened to Jan Michael Vincent?) but
unique "photographic" images as well. The last time I looked,
of the eleven albums for sale, five were on hold, one was sold, one
was not available and four were not spoken for.
Steidl, the German
art book publisher, has teamed up with the gallery to produce a limited
edition run of every image in this exhibition and is available in an
exquisite red box with eleven simulated photo albums exactly as the
originals for $95. There is also a free (get 'em while you can) mini-album
of seven images including a blissed-out pasty-faced, bespectled Andy
self-portrait.
