Tag Archives: Andy Warhol

Star

Queer Star, David Bowie and Gender Anarchy

by Jimmi Shrode

At the age of 10, I had discovered David Bowie in the pages of 16 Magazine. The wholesome safe pop idols; David Cassidy, The Osmonds and The Jackson 5 were giving way to the Glam Rockers; Lou Reed, Alice Cooper and David Bowie. Bowie was the ring leader with a shocking vermillion rooster cut and tight satin pants. With shocking blue eyeshadow highlighting his mismatched eyes and lipstick, he lead the way for the Sexual Revolution by way of Gender Anarchy and Queerness.

As David Jones, young Bowie couldn’t get arrested with a string of forgettable Anthony Newley meets The Beatles songs that were too twee. Later he would don a maxi dress and sing folkish rock songs, some notice but not quite. The novelty of ‘Space Oddity‘ coincided with America’s Moon Landing brought minor fame, introducing us to Major Tom, an astronaut lost forever in the stars. It was Ziggy Stardust, a rock and roll messiah who came just in time for the end of the world to lead us to Mars, the world of Sexual Chaos. David had announced he was Gay despite being in a marriage with Angie Bowie and son Zowie (now filmmaker Duncan Jones). Bowie was launched into the stratosphere.

Bowie became godlike and seduced the teens of Britain and America. A clever ruse in an age where news traveled slowly. Bowie arrived on the shores of America with an entourage, claiming great status abroad in Europe. The record executives bought it all. Global success at last. Bowie’s androgyny smashed into the world of suburbia here in the USA and abroad. Queerness was on sale in a record shop near you. Boys dressed in make up and mom’s cast-offs, skinny jeans and experimented with each other leaving lipstick traces. Girls swooned for this Queer Elvis. Adults were dismayed. What was dirty and whispered about in secret was now wrapped up in Japanese Modernist Fashion and Kabuki via the LSD dreams of Timothy Leary, strutting under the spotlights for all the world to see.

Bowie rediscovered Lou Reed, Andy Warhol’s Superstar and leader of the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground had inspired Bowie when the Exploding Plastic Inevitable made it to the UK. The psychedelic multimedia show of music, lights and art inspired David Jones. Ever the avid student; he absorbed it and made it his own. His alchemy would extend into the music world and reinvent others as it had himself.

Iggy Pop, the sweaty, muscular singer with a proto-punk band The Stooges, was now clad in tight Lurex pants and had black eyeliner, mascara and lipstick. Bowie took Iggy into the studio and allegedly into his bedroom. Bowie’s aesthetic wiped off onto Lou Reed who now dressed in makeup and leather. Reed had taken a walk onto the Wild Side.

As he retired the glitter and paint in favor of Soul Boy clothes, the label of Queerness became an albatross. While good for breaking through indifference into Rock and Roll, rock was still a boy’s club. Even though some of them adopted Bowie’s fey ways, they were still hetero-normative. Bowie, addicted to cocaine and becoming increasingly paranoid retreated further away from Ziggy Stardust. With slicked back blonde hair, classic 30’s suits and a cigarette, he became the nihilistic Thin White Duke. Then Bowie made the famous Hitler Salute in Victoria Station, casting up shadows of fascism. It was apropos. Fascism had destroyed the Weimar Era Drag for the sturm und drang of masculinity.

As a chameleon, Bowie further reinvented himself and in the 1980’s had a renaissance into New Wave Music. Still, the shadow of homosexuality clung to him. Disavowing and ignoring it, yet, always present. Some Gay People felt betrayed that their idol who led them out of the closet had returned to the closet. It was a fearsome time when Reagan and Thatcher conservatism and AIDS ravaged Gay Liberation.

David Bowie always endured and was relevant in every decade nonetheless. The 90’s saw collaborations with Trent Reznor and Dr. Dre. In the Aughts; Bowie became the crooner he had been with his smash album Heathen. Then he dropped out of sight after a heart attack only to reemerge in time for his final curtain calls with his albums The Next Day and Blackstar. Blackstar saw the artist use his own impending death to craft his final statement, dying soon after.

To me and many others; Bowie’s act of Sexual Rebellion had forever changed us, bringing a deeper understanding of gender, sexuality and self-expression. Bowie’s image as Ziggy Stardust remains cemented in our psyche. Often copied and rebranded, a white faced Bowie with a bold red and blue lighting bolt in the center of his face crowned with orange hair is how we remember him most; the Queer Bowie. Our Queer Star.

Written by Jimmi Shrode

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Pop

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International Pop, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Through May 15, 2016

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting a groundbreaking survey of an important movement that explores a global phenomenon that was shaped by artists working in many different countries throughout the world. International Pop features paintings, sculpture, assemblage, installation, printmaking, and film by eighty artists, drawn from public and private collections, and offers an intriguing new look at a subject that is familiar. Viewing Pop Art through a much wider lens, it is sure to delight audiences and broaden their understanding of one of the most significant chapters in the history of contemporary art. This is the first traveling exhibition in the United States to present a comprehensive account of the development of Pop Art during the 1960s and 1970s. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the final venue and the only East Coast presentation.

Hers is a Lush Situation, 1958, Richard Hamilton, (Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK, Wilson Gift through the Art Fund, 2006)

Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, stated: “Pop was one of the most iconic art movements of the second half of the twentieth century. This exhibition is an ambitious effort to explore its emergence and impact far beyond the borders of the United States and Britain. We are delighted that in Philadelphia we are adding to the exhibition some important works from private collections and our own holdings of contemporary art.”

Oiran, 1968, by Ushio Shinohara (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo) © Ushio and Noriko Shinohara

Highlights of International Pop include works of major British and American artists presented in juxtaposition with works by artists from other countries that were centers for the development of Pop Art. Hers is a Lush Situation, a work painted in 1957 by one of the seminal figures of this movement, the British artist Richard Hamilton, offers a witty commentary on the advertising adage that sex sells. It treats the forms and shapes of a Buick as an evocation of the human body, punctuated by a cut-out of Sophia Loren’s lips. Other artists would look at this issue in a different light. In O Beijo (The Kiss) of 1967, for example, the Brazilian Waldemar Cordeiro turns the lips of Bridget Bardot into a mechanized image of a kinetic sculpture, fusing pop culture and emerging computer technology. By contrast, in Ice Cream, the Belgian artist Evelyne Axell paints a woman licking an ice cream cone from a radically feminized perspective, at once quoting and challenging notions of sexual desire.

Dalila doble plataforma, 1967, by Dalila Puzzovio (Mock Galeria, Buenos Aires)

Be an Outlaw, Be a Hero (Seja Marginal, seja herói), 1967, by Hélio Oiticica (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with funds contributed by the Committee on Modern and Contemporary Art)

A key work shown only in Philadelphia is Jasper Johns‘s Flag, 1958, in which the artist represents the iconic image of the American flag in a literal way and at the same time utilizes it as a vehicle for exploring new possibilities for contemporary painting. Other works, such as Antônio Henrique Amaral‘s Homenagem ao Século XX/XXI (20th/21stCentury Tribute), 1967, suggest that such an image could not be separated from the dominance of America as a cultural power in Brazil at this time. Ushio Shinohara‘s Coca-Cola Plan (After Rauschenberg) of 1964 reflects the complex relationship between Japanese artists and their American counterparts, whose work they largely experienced through print media. Also seen only in Philadelphia are Mimmo Rotella’s The Hot Marilyn, 1962—a decollage of an Italian movie poster shredded from wear on the street—and Ed Ruscha’s Felix, 1960, an early example of his work in the idiom of Pop Art, of which he was one of this country’s pioneering figures.

Woman Descending the Staircase (Frau die Treppe herabgehend), 1965, by Gerhard Richter (The Art Institute of Chicago; Roy J. and Frances R. Friedman Endowment: Gift of Lannan Foundation) © Gerhard Richter

Foodscape, 1964, by Erró, Oil on canvas, (Moderna Museet, Stockholm)

LOOK! 1964, by Joe Tilson (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis: Art Center Acquisition Fund, 1966) © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London

Emerging first in the United Kingdom and the United States, Pop Art soon become an international phenomenon, finding expression in a bewildering variety of different forms and media. It was a product of a revolutionary social and political era as well as a response to the proliferation of consumer culture in the decades after World War II and the media—magazines, television, and motion pictures—that fueled its growth. The exhibition gives visitors a rare opportunity to see Pop Art in a new light. It examines the factors that shaped artistic activity in the social democracies of Europe, the military regimes of Latin America, and Japan in the aftermath of U.S. occupation. It includes sections closely examining vital hubs of Pop activity in Great Britain, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, the United States, and Japan. International Pop also brings together works from diverse geographic regions and different periods during the development of the movement to explore common themes and subjects.

Epiphany, 1964-1989, by Richard Hamilton (Collection of Rita Donagh), © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London

Ice Cream, 1964, by Evelyne Axell (Collection of Serge Goisse, Belgium)

Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963, by Edward Ruscha (Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire: Gift of James Meeker, class of 1958, in memory of Lee English, Class of 1958, scholar, poet, athlete and friend to all) © Edward Ruscha, courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Among the other artists featured in International Pop are James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Rosalyn Drexler, and Andy Warhol (United States); Peter Blake, and Pauline Boty (Great Britain); Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter (Germany); Keiichi Tanaami, and Genpei Akasegawa (Japan); Antônio Dias (Brazil); and Marta Minujín, Dalila Puzzovio, and Edgardo Costa (Argentina); Sergio Lombardo and Mario Schifano (Italy); and Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Martial Raysse (France).

Still Life #35, 1963, by Tom Wesselmann (Collection of Claire Wesselmann) © Visual Artists and Galleries Assoc., Inc. (VAGA), New York

Look Mickey, 1961, by Roy Lichtenstein (National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

Zone, 1961, by James Rosenquist (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with the Edith H. Bell Fund, 1982-9-1) © Visual Artists and Galleries Assoc., Inc. (VAGA), New York

Curator: Erica F. Battle, The John Alchin and Hal Marryatt Associate Curator of Contemporary Art

Support: International Pop is organized by the Walker Art Center. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Major support for the exhibition is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Prospect Creek Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Margaret and Angus Wurtele Family Foundation. Additional support is generously provided by Judy Dayton, Lyn De Logi, Marge and Irv Weiser, and Audrey and Zygi Wilf.

In Philadelphia, the exhibition is supported by the Estate of Phyllis T. Ballinger, the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions, The Laura and William C. Buck Endowment for Exhibitions, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission. Additional generous donors include John Alchin and Hal Marryatt, Mitchell L. and Hilarie L. Morgan, Isabel and Agustín Coppel, Jaimie and David Field, Marsha and Jeffrey Perelman, and Lyn M. Ross.

Corporate support generously provided by RBC Wealth Management.

The Museum gratefully recognizes exhibition media partner Time Out.

Publication: The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue. It is the first major survey to chronicle the emergence and development of Pop art from an international perspective, focusing on the period from the 1950s through the early 1970s. Including original texts from a diverse roster of contributors, the catalogue offers important new scholarship on the period. The volume includes some 320 illustrations, including full-color plates of each work in the exhibition, integrating many classics of Pop art with other rarely seen works. Published by the Walker Art Center, the hardbound 368-page volume is distributed by Distributed Art Publishers.

“Passport to Pop” Public Programs: In Philadelphia, the exhibition will be accompanied by Passport to Pop, a series of public programs including artists’ talks, lectures, panel discussions, and special tours. In addition, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is collaborating with International House, in West Philadelphia, and Ed Halter of Light Industry, New York, to host eight nights of Pop art films from February to May.

Social Media:

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Instagram: @philamuseum

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is Philadelphia’s art museum. We are a landmark building. A world-renowned collection. A place that welcomes everyone. We bring the arts to life, inspiring visitors—through scholarly study and creative play—to discover the spirit of imagination that lies in everyone. We connect people with the arts in rich and varied ways, making the experience of the Museum surprising, lively, and always memorable. We are committed to inviting visitors to see the world—and themselves—anew through the beauty and expressive power of the arts.

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Read DoN‘s review of 180 Farben (180 Colors), Gerhard Richter, Philadelphia Museum of Art on DoNArTNeWs.com