Art à la Warhol (6) – Tributes to the POPE of POP
I recently had the privilege of experiencing the world-debut of “Andy Warhol 15 Minutes Eternal” at the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands, here in Singapore.
This whole week is dedicated to “Art à la Warhol“. We have looked into Andy’s key works that give us a window to a particular point in his life and the experiences that brought about that expression. We have also tried out art projects to mimic the Warhol style. However, today we examine works not made by but made for Andy Warhol– I bring you “Tributes to the Pope of Pop”.
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Army of life-size Andy Warhols by Jack Dowd
Photo taken at Sarasota, Florida
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Multi-color life-size sculptures of the great American pop artist Andy Warhol, which look upon visitors with arms folded and eerie inscrutable expressions. Read more
“Ordinary Extraordinary” by Ivan Lovatt
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The Andy Warhol Monument
Tribute Sculpture by Rob Pruitt
Union Square, New York
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It’s easy to pass by the Decker Building at 33 Union Square West or the building at 860 Broadway, now housing a Petco, without knowing their historical significance in the world of Pop Art.
There’s no sign explaining that Andy Warhol had his “Factory” here, first in the Decker building, in 1968, before moving a block away in the 1970s to Broadway and 17th Street to make his silkscreens, print his magazines and do his screen tests.
Warhol finally has his tribute: The Andy Monument.
The pop art icon, who worked in the Union Square area until 1984 and passed away in 1987, is returning to the area in the guise of a ghostly silver 10-foot-tall sculpture by Rob Pruitt.
The shiny chrome statue towers over the pedestrian plaza at 17th Street, across from the park and near the spot where he was shot by Valerie Solanas in 1968.
Pruitt fashioned the statue, commissioned by the Public Art Fund, by using digital scanning of a live model — his friend and Cincinnati art collector Andy Stillpass — and hand sculpting.
He imagined Warhol in 1977, dressed in Levi’s 501s, a Brooks Brothers blazer, wearing a Polaroid camera around his neck and carrying a Medium Brown Bag from Bloomingdale’s, which in Pruitt’s mind, is filled with copies of Interview magazine. Warhol founded the magazine in 1969 and would often hand out copies on the street, Pruitt said.
Also, Pruitt recounted Warhol’s fondness for Bloomies. The artist, who considered it heaven, famously once said, “Death is like going to Bloomingdale’s.”
Warhol’s world, filled with artists, junkies, drag queens and other social misfits, attracted people like Pruitt to come to New York. He came here in 1982 to go to Parsons, leaving the suburbs of Washington, D.C. where he had four cats — Andy, Halston, Calvin and Liza — named for Warhol’s pack of Studio 54 friends.
“It’s kind of inexplicable how that information got to me in pre-Internet existence,” said Pruitt, who first met Warhol at a book signing the artist held at a D.C. bookstore. Pruitt bought a bunch of Brillo boxes and Campbell’s soup cans for the artist to sign, which Pruitt still has in his childhood bedroom.
Pruitt believes the statue will become a pilgrimage site.
“I think it’s a wonderful bookend to the Statue of Liberty,” said Public Art Fund president Susan Freedman. “He was a beacon that brought people to New York in a very different way… for another generation of seekers and people feeling like outcasts.”
Jennifer Falk, the executive director of the Union Square Partnership, anticipates there will be even more than the 150,000 daily visitors passing through Union Square because of the statue. Info Source
The Andy Warhol Museum
Info Source
- located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Andy Warhol’s birthplace
- one of the most comprehensive single-artist museums in the world.
- houses more than 4,000 works of art by Warhol including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, films and videos, and a massive collection of Warhol’s “time-capsules” – boxed records of the artist’s day-to-day dealings and penchant for collecting
- While dedicated to Andy Warhol, the museum also hosts rotating exhibits by artists who push the boundaries of art, just as Warhol did.
The Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art
- located in Medzilaborce, Slovakia
- established in 1991 by the American family of the artist Andy Warhol and the Slovak Ministry of Culture
- it has the second largest Andy Warhol collection worldwide after Pittsburg’s Warhol museum.
- Until 1996 this museum was called The Warhol Family Museum of Modern Art (WFMMA).
- The museum’s Andy Warhol Permanent Exhibition consists of 160 Warhol works of art, most drawings and silkscreens, as well as Warhol memorabilia.
- Also displayed are works by Andy’s brother Paul Warhola and his son James Warhola.
- The museum features prominently in the documentary Absolut Warhola, directed by Stanislaw Mucha.
Andy’s connection to Slovakia:
His parents were working-class Rusyn emigrants from Mikó (now called Miková), located in today’s northeastern Slovakia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.Info Source
An Illustrated Tribute to Andy Warhol
or “Uncle Andy”
or “Uncle Andy”
Uncle Andy’s: A Faabbbulous Visit
With Andy Warhol
When James Warhola was a little boy, his father had a junk business that turned their yard into a wonderful play zone that his mother didn’t fully appreciate! But whenever James and his family drove to New York City to visit Uncle Andy, they got to see how “junk” could become something truly amazing in an artist’s hands.
Uncle Andy’s offers an exciting and unique perspective on one of the most influential artists of our time. Through James’ eyes, we see the things that made his family visits memorable-including the wonderful disarray of Andy’s house, waking up surrounded by important art and incredible collected objects, trying on Andy’s wigs, sharing the run of Andy’s house with his twenty-five cats (all named Sam), and getting art supplies from Andy as a goodbye present. James was lucky enough to learn about art from an innovative master and he shows how these visits with Uncle Andy taught him about the creative process and inspired him to become an artist.
“Once you ‘got’ Pop,
you could never see a sign the same way again.
And once you thought Pop,
you could never see America
the same way again.”
-Andy Warhol-
DAILY DOSE OF ART 
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