Andy Warhol: Red Books

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Summary: WARHOL MANIA: SEEING RED AND LOVING IT
Review: Andy Warhol Red Books is a coffee table book that's actually several books in one --- and a set that silences all competitors. These are copies of the Polaroids Andy took, neatly bound in red covers and bound with plastic spiral bindings --- 11 mini books in all with the twelfth (black) volume containing the pertinent names and dates of the photographs, plus an introduction by the internationally-renowned photographer Francois-Marie Banier. It is Banier who captures the allure of these instant photos best: "In his Polaroids, in those seemingly lacquered little pictures, I saw at once the cry of frantic and reckless youth, lost in a pseudo-civilized world. Each of these Polaroids goes one step further, telling us, from the land of Mickey Mouse: you are all Andy Warhol characters." From 1969 to 1975, celebrities (from Christopher Isherwood to Mick Jagger, Caroline Kennedy to Rudolph Nureyev, Rex Reed to Sylvia Miles), drag queens and assorted Warholian characters are captured crisply, realistically, and above all, affectionately. Owning the Red Books is (almost) like owning one of the more bizarre time capsules of the twentieth century.