File puptcrit/puptcrit.0708, message 273


Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 11:21:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gretchen Van Lente <gretchen-AT-dramaofworks.com>
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Andy Warhol Soup Cans, etc., etc.


Well said, Sean! 
(Of course some experiments turn out better than others...)

Speaking of good experiments - thanks to Steve Widerman for
putting together such a great program in Huntington. I couldn't
get out there, but it is just so great that he made that happen
- KUDOS!

- Gretchen


--- biersblackwood-AT-aol.com wrote:

> Gretchen,
> 
> The baby can of soup in "Warhol" having a shock of white hair
> was a 
> touch I loved.
> 
> (And reminds me that there will have to be another opening for
> my 
> Puppet Slam Cafe piece at the Puppets on the Sound Fest,
> organized by 
> Steve Widerman and the Huntington Arts Council and the Cinema
> Arts 
> Centre, as my Slam piece in St Paul opened with an angry soup
> can... I 
> thought about giving him a tuft of hair, but none of my
> attempts looked 
> as good as the wig you'd used in the show I'd just seen that
> night!  
> Hmmm... See how I've cleverly worked a plug for tomorrow
> night's show 
> in Huntington in here....)
> 
> That your show focused on some unknown aspects of Andy
> Warhol's 
> personal life -- for instance his deeply religious nature --
> was one of 
> the things I liked best about it.  His religion and art met,
> in one 
> case, when he wrote a letter to John Paul II asking the Pope
> not to 
> have the Sistine Chapel ceiling cleaned, as Warhol felt that
> the 
> centuries of grime and soot that had built up on the painting
> added to 
> its artistic strength, at least for the generations who had
> known it 
> only in its somewhat clouded state.
> 
> The Pope had it cleaned anyway... but in 400 years, it will no
> doubt 
> look the way Warhol preferred it!
> 
> Everything we do, or should do, whether it be a puppet show, a
> puppet 
> slam, an art installation, painting the Sistine Chapel,
> gingerly 
> cleaning the Sistine Chapel so that it might look the way
> Michelangelo 
> intended (or not cleaning it because the environment and
> history of the 
> piece have become part of the experience)... well, all these
> things are 
> merely artistic experiments.
> 
> Sean K.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gretchen Van Lente <gretchen-AT-dramaofworks.com>
> To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
> Sent: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:05:27 -0700 (PDT)
> Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Andy Warhol Soup Cans, etc., etc.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hey Alan - thanks for your insightful words on Warhol and his
> place in the art world - basically beginning the very American
> pop art movement. Warhol himself began his career as an
> illustrator, working for shoe designers and such, so he was
> already using his art as a product from the beginning. Soup
> cans
> were simply the next step.
> 
> The subject of Andy being so broad, we had struggled for a
> long
> time with different versions of the show, trying to cram every
> tidbit about the man into the piece. In the end this was not
> successful and we decided to focus on the contrasts in his
> life
> and simple observations about how this might effect a puppet
> version of himself looking back on his life: comparing his
> mother giving a young Andy (a tiny soup can with white hair)
> soup and those soup cans later becoming slick "art" etc. We
> purposely left his ties to the greater art world back in
> previous versions of the show. We wanted the piece to be more
> about his personal life and the ways it influenced his art and
> vice versa. (He did say his mother fed him soup every day for
> lunch.) It also was meant to be witty, whimsical and
> light-hearted and at times very abstract, as his paintings
> were.
> 
> 
> I'm sorry you didn't get as much out of the show as you might
> have wanted, but I love that the show has got you posting
> about
> Warhol and discussing him as an artist - in that alone, I
> think
> we were successfull. In my mind a show is never "done" so if
> you
> have more notes for me on the piece I would love to hear them,
> please write me off-list if you'd like!
> 
> - Gretchen
> Artistic Director, Drama of Works
> Director, WARHOL
> 
> 
> --- Alan Cook <alangregorycook-AT-msn.com> wrote:
> 
> > Since the 2007 Puppet Rampage offered a show about Andy
> Warhol
> > (with a single puppet portrait of Andy) I was hoping we'd
> have
> > learned more about Andy and his significance (if any) in the
> > show. I hope the show can be expanded. As it was, for me,
> > there was too much missing.
> >
> > At the time Andy Warhol was unleashed on the art world, a
> Los
> > Angeles gallery was filled with paintings of Campbell Soup
> > flavors. Another gallery down the street, placed a pedestal
> in
> > their window, placed an actual Campbell's soup can on it,
> put
> > a sign next to it, "Get the REAL thing here, 89 Cents". 
> That
> > was an effective dialogue.
> >
> > We hear the phrase from many people, "I don't know anything
> > about art, but I know what I like."
> >  Andy took it a step further and gave people "what they DID
> > know"---soup cans, brillo boxes and celeb seriagraph
> > portraits.
> >
> > The art of advertising entered the galleries. Well, art had
> > already entered advertising (Tolouse Lautrec posters,
> anyone?)
> > and why not a two-way street?
> >
> > ALAN COOK
> >
> >
> >
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