No comments about Andy Warhol 365 Takes.

No comments about Andy Warhol: Ladies & Gentleman, Sex Parts, Torsos, Polaroids.

2 comments about The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne Vol. 1: Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963.

1. WOW. This is a real work of research. The amount of detail and care that has gone into this study of Warhol's early paintings is not to be believed. The editors have compiled a completely staggering amount of information about each work shown here--and who knew there were so many original paintings?

   My only complaint is the book's design, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with Warhol's own aesthetic. The pictures are beautiful, but the words are tough on the eyes--the table of contents is especially awful. This is really a shame, because you can see pictures of Warhol paintings in lots of places. I don't know where you'd find all this wonderful data, though. (Put it on CD-ROM!)

   It's definitely an expensive book, but unmatched, as far as I can tell, in its field. Bravo!




2. The main problem with this book is the layout of each page into three columns, thus all the pictures are quite small. So this is not a book to really enjoy the art. The text is also often far from essential, for example it contains relevant quotes from "The Andy Warhol diaries" or "Popism", which any Warhol fan will already have. It is worth remembering most of the original prints/paintings are measured in meters, so there is little satisfaction in looking at passport-photo sized pictures. "The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne" is really only a reference book for art galleries or perhaps art collectors, and I'd recommend Warhol fans to stay away from this extremely expensive purchase, it contains zero enjoyment compared to leafing through the superb "Giant Warhol", where the appreciation of the immensity of Warhol's work can be much better appreciated.

No comments about Andy Warhol: Strange World.

3 comments about Andy Warhol's Time Capsule 21.

1. Ok, we all know Andy Warhol kept everything, but how boring is that? Not so boring at all, as it turns out. Maybe the Warhol Museum picked the best time-capsule box, maybe they are all full of interesting goodies, but box number 21 is a doozey. And everything Andy packed away is there on the page ready to comb over, connect to paintings, make assumptions and check out like any well trained obsessive. For fans of Warhol this book is a must and the best of fun. Lots of pics, not too much elevated art talk and beautifully produced.



2. Brought to us with care by a colloboration between the Andy Warhol Museum and a German museum, the Museum for Modern Kunst.
   
   Currently (August, 2005) you can see an online exhibition of this time capsule at the Andy Warhol Museum web site. There's information about just 50 of the time capsule objects (more info than in this book for those 50), including not just text but also audio and video. You can see and hear Andy and Candy Darling among others. You can also zoom in on an object, which you will wish you could do with many the picutures of many objects in the book. Even with a good magnifying glass, some writing may not be readable, being either too light or too much a scrawl.
   
   The book is well-packaged with good binding, cover, layout, foreword and guided tour of the time capsule. The text of the contexts is at the end of the book, which does give more room to depict the object in the main body of the book, but means having to go back and forth to the back in order to learn a little about the object. The text for each object is sparse, but you often learn, for example, just who it is in a certain photo. Unfortunately, the text often doesn't tell you any more than the picture does. To be really helpful, the 7-page guide could have been considerably longer.
   
   As it is, this book provides a good sense of how diverse Warhol's interests were. It will take a good deal of time to get to know all the objects and, to do that well, may take searching around for supplementary info. Who's Roslyn Drexler, subject of several photo strips? Who's David Tudor, who presented new piano works?
   Who's Andy Warhol and what do all these objects from just this one time capsule, tell us about him?
   
   After reading this, you may very well feel ready to begin filling your own time capsules. As a supplement to or alternative for, a diary, it seems an easy but effective way to capture an interval in your development. Ten years from now, you may find your own time capsules more engaging than Andy's.



3. "Box 21" is an interesting package, but not something I'm likely to ever go through again. It's interesting only the first time 'round.
   The people left in charge of Warhol's world are trying so hard to make money from it. They are sure to be selling each and every "time capsule" he kept. It's a way to keep themselves going and what he would have wanted.
   The people in charge of Warhol are not to be trusted. I suggest anyone wanting to really learn about him not buy anything from the Warhol institute, foundation, museum, whatever guise his money is still feeding them.
   Believe me, if this book had been good, I'd be praising it. Don't waste your money. Although Warhol would've liked it if you had.

1 comments about Patti Smith: Strange Messenger.

1. The problem with buying from Amazon is that they bug you with emails to review the products and they make it a really unnecessarily arduous task. Click this, scroll that, preview, submit. Hey, get off my back!

2 comments about The Velvet Underground (Icons of Pop Music).

1. It must be a near impossible brief to write something aimed at both music undergrads and the `general reader', which this book claims to do but I think Richard Witts pretty much manages to pull it off. `The Velvet Underground' is the first in a series of books on pop icons, (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and others are to follow) which not only examines the musical, social and cultural influences on `The Velvets' but which proves to be at one and the same time a downright enjoyable read.
   
   Although set against the background of Manhattan's down town drug culture, this is no seedy romp through the under belly of the 1960s New York music scene. This is a serious book in which just about every aspect of the band's genesis, demise and subsequent influence on punk, post punk and rock music is covered. Each Velvet in turn is subjected to detailed scrutiny in terms of background, his/her gravitation to New York City, musical interests and experiences, influences felt, and contribution to the band and its radical sound-world.
   
   Cale's Experimentalism and his association with the avant-gardist La Monte Young and The Theatre of Eternal Youth, probably receives the most overtly academic analysis, but Reed, Morrison, Tucker, Nico, Warhol and Morrissey are also fully scrutinized in a clear, cogent and well argued challenge to much of the myth and hyperbole which has grown up around this `confluence of misfits' (Witts).
   
   
   Serious it might be, but anecdotes a-plenty and some sharp comments stop it slipping into too-dry academic commentary. (There's a very funny Witts-ism following a Nico quote which I won't reveal. You can read it for yourself.) So, as long as the general reader who picks up this book has a somewhat serious interest in music or The Velvets, I doubt he will be disappointed. And if the undergrads ever get around to opening the cover, even they might come away having learned something pertinent :-)



2. Richard Witts succeeds in providing a lot of information about The Velvet Underground in this book. However, it is an academic exercise, not a flowing narrative. A good purchase if you'd like theories and analysis of this influential band. Not reccommended if you're looking for an interesting biography of The Velvet Underground.

No comments about Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth and Basquiat.

4 comments about Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne 1962-1987.

1. This gem of a book gets into all the details of Warhol's print making. See source images as well as artist's and printer's proofs. A must for any collector wanting to explore Warhol's work as well as a real eye opener as to how busy this man really kept himself.



2. Prints, proofs, paintings -- everything is here, plus essays that explicate and set context.



3. This 3rd edition of Andy Warhol Prints gives much information to someone who is interested in the various published and unpublished works which Warhol created. In addition to providing color photographs of the prints, the book gives details about the edition size and characteristics of each individual portfolio. This book will be quite useful for the Warhol fan, art students, as well as collectors of Warhol's work. It is the most definitive book of his prints available.



4. I would like to add to the reviews below that this book is a pleasure to hold and to view because it is so well made. If there is any 'art' book that should be made for posterity it is the catalog raisonne of an artist. In this instance, the publisher has done the artist's audience a real service for, the book is beautifully printed and bound in Italy by Amilcare Pizzi; Italy seeming to have usurped Switzerland's place as the world's premier art book printer. The pages are thick and glossy and the reproduction is top notch.
   For those of you who are unaware of what a catalog raisonne is, it is meant to be a compilation and historical record of an artist's work that documents execution date, medium, size of image or plate, size of edition if a print, whether signed or unsigned, etc. This information is used by artists, historians, collectors and dealers to attribute a piece of art and place it in the artist's oevre, and of course to aid in placing relative value on it. Here too, the archivists, publisher, and editor have done a fine job of documenting the relevant facts. This is especially important in the case of Warhol who was a serial printer, sometimes to the point of intentional promiscuity. So, the fact that wherever possible relevant information is provided speaks volumes about the prodigious effort that must have gone into this undertaking. I rate this book four stars because I fear that since this is the third edition, there will be yet another edition published that renders this one obsolete. I understand this is precisely because Warhol was an inprecise documentarian, when he chose to do so at all, but I don't relish having to purchase another high dollar, though valuable book that is only slightly different from the one I already own. For people who don't give a darn, the book rates a five.

1 comments about Andy Warhol: Film Factory.

1. Read it for a film class. Personally neither his filmmaking nor his painting do much for me.