Andy Warhol's other delights: the early album covers

In the category of Absolutely Not Crappy Album Covers are those designed by Andy Warhol, especially the early work, before the banana and the Sticky Fingers packaging for the Rolling Stones. I saw an exhibit of these at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh last June, and was surprised by their number, variety and graphic appeal. The New York Times ran a story in April 2009, and there is "a lavishly illustrated, fastidiously documented book" called Andy Warhol: The Record Covers, 1949-1987, by Paul Maréchal, published jointly by Prestel and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

This description is from the NYT piece by Fred Kaplan (April 29, 2009):

These early covers “have pizazz and elegance and a sneaky linearity, like Cocteau with a movement disorder,” said Wayne Koestenbaum, the author of a Warhol biography. “The blotted line gives a jumpy and nervous and emotionally unstable rhythm to the otherwise coherent line, like a dry drunk.”

Here are just a few of the early covers, of jazz, blues, ballet, and folk music. The blotted line makes the illustrations look very contemporary, in sync with the distressed fonts that are so popular now. Dry drunk effect aside, there is beauty, ease, and confidence to these early illustrations. I like the sharp little heels on the Kenny Burrell nude, a nod to the shoe ads Warhol did for the I. Miller company, for which he won the Art Directors Club’s highest honor in 1957. Another nice feature: overlays of color juxtaposed against that black blotted line. Just think about the impact of that kind of layering on subsequent design.

I wonder what Don Draper thinks of Andy Warhol? Can't wait until his work makes a (by now overdue) appearance on Mad Men: there were the jewelry and shoe ads in fashion magazines, Tiffany and Bonwit Teller window displays, and finally, the riotous gallery shows and the Here Comes Everybody of  popular decadent culture.

Shepard Fairey's work is now on view at the Andy Warhol Museum: a perfect place for it. Interesting that these is no search feature at The Andy Warhol Museum site (unless I am missing something). Maybe that's because there is just so much to search for – the work continues in the archives of Warhol's vast collections.

Travels with Charley, and John Steinbeck

I haven't yet read John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America, but I love the (fiercely romantic) language I found on a friend's facebook info page, under favorite quotes:

For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage...

The next passage in my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it's difficult to analyze love when you're in it.

Steinbeck wrote the book about a road trip he made in 1960, with his French standard poodle Charley, in a specially-made camper named Rocinante, like Don Quixote's horse. The trip covered nearly 10,000 miles. I think it's a book for Mad Men's Don Draper. (I still need to read The Grapes of Wrath, too.)

Don't Take the Diet Too Seriously: John Cage's 27 Sounds in the Kitchen

My brother's birthday two days ago got me thinking about the composer John Cage. There are quite a few good videos of Cage on You Tube, and after watching a few, this is the one I selected for you: 27 sounds manufactured in a kitchen. Cage was an early Western adopter of a macrobiotic diet (following John Lennon and Yoko Ono) and he talks about that here, in an endearing way.

(No matter how many times I watch this, it always makes me laugh at the end. Whatever diet you follow, don't take the diet too seriously... and pay attention to the sounds you manufacture in the kitchen!)

There's also a 9:22 video of Cage on the tv show I've Got a Secret in January 1960, performing "Water Walk." At the time, he was teaching Experimental Composition at New School in New York City. He uses 5 radios in the piece, but wasn't able to turn them on because of a labor dispute about which of two unions should be allowed to plug in the radios (a detail that seems to please him, and he adapts, slapping the radios instead). The very end of the spot has some fun graphics advertising a companion show of that era, What's My Line? (I have to wonder if Betty and Don Draper, from Mad Men, caught John Cage on I've Got a Secret. My guess is that Bets would find it silly, or annoying – those damaged radios! – whereas Don might be intrigued, taking a long draw on his cigarette before wincing and smiling and packing some idea away in his ad man head.)

There's also a very cool film clip, from Dreams that Money Can Buy, a movie by Hans Richter, with a Marcel Duchamp film fragment (complete with a nearly-nude descending a staircase) and music by John Cage. Somehow these early avant garde pieces still seem relevant and compelling today. It's that uncanny mix of nostalgia for something that happened before my time (so that I missed it at its "moment") and the discovery of how fresh and forward-thinking the experimentation still feels. It's interesting to think about how artists keep playing with the same tropes and obsessions, in various media configurations. For Duchamp it was (partly) the nude, but a "new nude," a very conceptual one.

If you click on the Duchamp link above, you'll find a timeline that includes his Rotary Demisphere, the device used for the optical spheres in Dreams that Money Can Buy. You'll also see the 1941 Box in a Valise, the portable museum of Duchamp's works, reproduced in miniature as if for a salesman's briefcase. 20 copies were created; I saw one at the Text/Messages: Books by Artists show at the Walker Art Center last December. There's also a preview of The Quick and The Dead exibition (next spring) with an interview called "Simon Starling: Tiepolo and Duchamp."

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