Andy Warhol 365 Takes: The Andy Warhol Museum Collection

Rating:
Summary: Warhol Lives
Review: Even at list price, this book is a great bargain.

The binding of this book is itself a work of art. It's also just one clear demonstration of how much care this staff puts into what they do.If you are an artist, you'll want to get the staff of the Andy Warhol Museum to come work at your museum.

The web site of the museum is another sign of how special this staff is. They even include a step by step opportunity for you to learn how Warhol made his silkscreens by making one yourself. As a Web application and as a learning experience, it's a standout and you can email the result to friends.

In this book, they had the wisdom not to try to present the definitive Warhol. That's why it is 365 takes and not 1 take.
Wouldn't you have liked to have lived your life so richly that 365 takes were needed to give a sense of who you are.

Granted, each of these takes (images on one page and text on the facing page) can't go very deep. However, they aren't fragments, each tries to be complete in itself. Chronology and flow are eschewed. The staff isn't trying to sell you on how Warhol was or how he got to be as he is, they are simply sharing with you these views, via his work, so you can perhaps develop a sense for yourself of what Warhol is about.

What really sinks in after just one pass thru these 365 takes, is that Warhol was about a lot. He had incredible coverage.

Because this book is so beautiful, the trashiness I'd come to associate with the Warhol scene isn't that apparent. The differences (from conventional lives) are. The productivity is. The fascinations are. The richness of experience is. The lack of judgmentalism is.

Seeing the web site and this book makes me wish a lot to visit Pittsburgh and see the Andy Warhol Museum first hand. And if this staff indeed somehow were all at another museum, I'd certainly want to go there. This museum staff is outstanding and one way you can tell how outstanding they are is to get this remarkably inexpensive high-quality book.

Rating:
Summary: AN ANDY A DAY ... MOST ARTFUL, INDEED!
Review: Think of this as an Andy a day keeping the aggravation away. Compiled by the staff of the Andy Warhol Museum (located in Pittsburgh, PA, and this year celebrating its tenth anniversary), this is a monumental, if scattered, collection of everything Warhol, deliberately non-traditional and open-ended. Fashion sketches from the `50s, Polaroids, the Brillo boxes, stills from his movies and television appearances, silkscreens and pencil drawings, the Death and Disaster Series, the Three Marilyns, the collaborations with the Velvet Underground ... it's all here, and it's all interlaced with quotes from Warhol, and "experts" on Warhol. The experts, today, sound like bozos, but there is humor and humanity in all of Warhol's comments. 365 Takes is a big book, perhaps too big, since Warhol is best savored in smaller doses. Still, the book certainly whets one's appetite for more concentrated, linear works of this great artist. Warhol's take on the middle of the twentieth century is astoundingly accurate and informed. Certainly very much the artist as an outsider observing the current culture, his views are surprisingly kind and simple. Let's face it: We all love gossip, dirty pictures and celebrities. Maybe we couldn't admit it back then, but it was true. And, of course, we all love Campbell's Soup.


Rating:
Summary: Shows the Andy Warhol Museum collection
Review: This is a thoughtful book which does not leave much out until you get to the index on pages 740-742. The pages are long horizontally, usually presenting text and a large number running from 1 on the page after page 5 to 365 on the page two pages before page 736. The index lists the big numbers only, the "Take" number. Are punching bags in the index? No. Is Jean-Michel Basquiat in the index? Yes, for six Takes under "Basquiat, Jean-Michel" and for three of the same Takes under "Jean-Michel Basquiat" (portraits, only one of which includes "and urine on canvas"). Is The Last Supper in the index? Yes, for three Takes. Do any of the Takes listed for Jean-Michel Basquiat coincide with Takes listed for The Last Supper? No, neither three or six, none! Which Take has ten punching bags? Take 255!!! How many times is Take 255 in the index? Just once, for "Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper)." Obviously, to use the index you need to know precisely what you are looking for.

In my previous review of a DVD on Andy Warhol as a great artist of the 20th century, I believe I understated how many times the word "JUDGE" appears on the ten punching bags. In the view shown in the photo in Take 255, I can count 5 times on the first, 6 times on the second, then 3, 5, 4, 4, 1, 1, 3, and 4 times, respectively, on the third to the tenth bag. Most of the bags look black and white, but the eighth bag has a blue crown or dark halo which might obscure a second "JUDGE" or "JESUS," a blue shape like a torso with head, the words "LEAD" and "ASBESTOS" and possibly BS, with a copyright insignia after the "JUDGE" at the bottom of the eighth punching bag. The bags are hanging so close together that a physics student is bound to wonder how many bags would start swinging if viewers had the opportunity to give a bag on one end a good punch into the rest of the line. The head of Christ appears to be largest on the first, fifth, and sixth punching bags, with the second and eighth having the smallest heads, to produce a standing wave effect even when the 14 inch diameter by 42 inch long bags are hanging stationary from chains to big beams in the ceiling. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh used to be a big warehouse, and Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper) might still be hanging there, because Entry 255 is not listed in the Photograph Credits, unless the bags are included in the bragging rights claimed by "Except where otherwise noted, ownership of all material is The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh." (p. 742). I hope they never catch me walking into that place with my practice gloves on.