View allAll Photos Tagged Transactional
Original drawing by sk8ordiehard
www.etsy.com/view_transaction.php?transaction_id=15209535
Fall 2009
Andy Warhol Kimiko: Ken C. Arnold Art Collection Andy Warhol
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to:navigation, search
For the song by David Bowie, see Andy Warhol (song)
Andy Warhol
Warhol in 1977
Birth name Andrew Warhola
Born August 6, 1928(1928-08-06)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died February 22, 1987 (aged 58)
New York City, U.S.
Nationality American
Field Painting, Cinema
Training Carnegie Mellon University
Movement Pop art
Works Chelsea Girls (1966 film)
Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966 event)
Campbell's Soup Cans (1962 painting)
Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and public figure known for his membership in wildly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.
The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Childhood
2 Early career
3 1960s
4 Attempted assassination
5 1970s
6 1980s
7 Sexuality
8 Religious beliefs
9 Death
10 Works
10.1 Paintings
10.2 Films
10.3 Factory in New York
10.4 Filmography
10.5 Music
10.6 Books and print
10.7 Other media
10.8 Producer and product
11 Dedicated museums
12 Movies about Warhol
12.1 Dramatic portrayals
12.2 Documentaries
13 See also
14 References
15 Further reading
16 External links
Childhood
Warhol's childhood home at 3252 Dawson Street in the South Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaAndy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[2] He was the fourth child of Ondrej Warhola (died 1942)[3] and Julia (nee Zavacka, 1892-1972),[4] whose first child was born in their homeland and died before their migration to the U.S. His parents were working-class immigrants from Mikó (now called Miková), in northeastern Slovakia, then part of Austro-Hungarian Empire. Warhol's father immigrated to the US in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Andy Warhol's grandparents. Warhol's father worked in a coal mine. The family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.[5] The family was Byzantine Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. Andy Warhol had two older brothers, Ján and Pavol, who were born in today's Slovakia. Pavol's son, James Warhola, became a successful children's book illustrator.
In third grade, Warhol had chorea, the nervous system disease that causes involuntary movements of the extremities, which is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever and causes skin pigmentation blotchiness.[6] He became a hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors. Often bed-ridden as a child, he became an outcast among his school-mates and bonded strongly with his mother.[7] At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio and collected pictures of movie stars around his bed. Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences. When Warhol was 13, his father died in an accident.[8]
Early career
Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (now Carnegie Mellon University).[9] In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a successful career in magazine illustration and advertising. During the 1950s, he gained fame for his whimsical ink drawings of shoe advertisements. These were done in a loose, blotted-ink style, and figured in some of his earliest showings at the Bodley Gallery in New York. With the concurrent rapid expansion of the record industry and the introduction of the vinyl record, Hi-Fi, and stereophonic recordings, RCA Records hired Warhol, along with another freelance artist, Sid Maurer, to design album covers and promotional materials.[10]
Campbell's Soup I (1968)1960s
His first one-man art-gallery exhibition as a fine artist[11][12] was on July 9, 1962, in the Ferus Gallery of Los Angeles. The exhibition marked the West Coast debut of pop art.[13] Andy Warhol's first New York solo Pop exhibit was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery November 6–24, 1962. The exhibit included the works Marilyn Diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills. At the Stable Gallery exhibit, the artist met for the first time John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, Sleep, in 1963.[citation needed]
It was during the 1960s that Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles, as well as paintings of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Troy Donahue, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor. He founded "The Factory", his studio during these years, and gathered around himself a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities. He began producing prints using the silkscreen method. His work became popular and controversial.
Among the imagery tackled by Warhol were dollar bills, celebrities and brand name products. He also used as imagery for his paintings newspaper headlines or photographs of mushroom clouds, electric chairs, and police dogs attacking civil rights protesters. Warhol also used Coca Cola bottles as subject matter for paintings. He had this to say about Coca Cola:
What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.[14]
New York's Museum of Modern Art hosted a Symposium on pop art in December 1962 during which artists like Warhol were attacked for "capitulating" to consumerism. Critics were scandalized by Warhol's open embrace of market culture. This symposium set the tone for Warhol's reception. Throughout the decade it became more and more clear that there had been a profound change in the culture of the art world, and that Warhol was at the center of that shift.[citation needed]
Campbell's Tomato Juice Box (1964)A pivotal event was the 1964 exhibit The American Supermarket, a show held in Paul Bianchini's Upper East Side gallery. The show was presented as a typical U.S. small supermarket environment, except that everything in it – from the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc. – was created by six prominent pop artists of the time, among them the controversial (and like-minded) Billy Apple, Mary Inman, and Robert Watts. Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's soup cost $1,500 while each autographed can sold for $6. The exhibit was one of the first mass events that directly confronted the general public with both pop art and the perennial question of what art is (or of what is art and what is not).[citation needed]
As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity. Collaboration would remain a defining (and controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career; in the 1960s, however, this was particularly true. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the artist with producing silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at "The Factory", Warhol's aluminum foil-and-silver-paint-lined studio on 47th Street (later moved to Broadway). Other members of Warhol's Factory crowd included Freddie Herko, Ondine, Ronald Tavel, Mary Woronov, Billy Name, and Brigid Berlin (from whom he apparently got the idea to tape-record his phone conversations).[15]
During the '60s, Warhol also groomed a retinue of bohemian eccentrics upon whom he bestowed the designation "Superstars", including Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet, and Candy Darling. These people all participated in the Factory films, and some – like Berlin – remained friends with Warhol until his death. Important figures in the New York underground art/cinema world, such as writer John Giorno and film-maker Jack Smith, also appear in Warhol films of the 1960s, revealing Warhol's connections to a diverse range of artistic scenes during this time.
Attempted assassination
On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic and curator Mario Amaya at Warhol's studio.[16] Before the shooting, Solanas had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene. She founded a "group" called S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) and authored the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a separatist feminist attack on patriarchy. Over the years, Solanas' manifesto has found a following.[17] Solanas appears in the 1968 Warhol film I, A Man. Earlier on the day of the attack, Solanas had been turned away from the Factory after asking for the return of a script she had given to Warhol. The script, apparently, had been misplaced.[18]
Amaya received only minor injuries and was released from the hospital later the same day. Warhol however, was seriously wounded by the attack and barely survived (surgeons opened his chest and massaged his heart to help stimulate its movement again). He suffered physical effects for the rest of his life. The shooting had a profound effect on Warhol's life and art.[19][20]
Solanas was arrested the day after the assault. By way of explanation, she said that Warhol "had too much control over my life." She was eventually sentenced to three years under the control of the Department of Corrections. After the shooting, the Factory scene became much more tightly controlled, and for many this event brought the "Factory 60s" to an end.[20] The shooting was mostly overshadowed in the media due to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy two days later.
Warhol had this to say about the attack: "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television." [21]
1970s
Andy Warhol and Jimmy Carter in 1977Compared to the success and scandal of Warhol's work in the 1960s, the 1970s proved a much quieter decade, as Warhol became more entrepreneurial. According to Bob Colacello, Warhol devoted much of his time to rounding up new, rich patrons for portrait commissions– including Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his wife Empress Farah Pahlavi, his sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross, Brigitte Bardot, and Michael Jackson.[22][citation needed] Warhol's famous portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was created in 1973. He also founded, with Gerard Malanga, Interview magazine, and published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975). An idea expressed in the book: "Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art."[cite this quote]
Warhol used to socialize at various nightspots in New York City, including Max's Kansas City; and, later in the '70s, Studio 54.[23] He was generally regarded as quiet, shy, and a meticulous observer. Art critic Robert Hughes called him "the white mole of Union Square."[24]
1980s
Warhol had a re-emergence of critical and financial success in the 1980s, partially due to his affiliation and friendships with a number of prolific younger artists, who were dominating the "bull market" of '80s New York art: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, David Salle and other so-called Neo-Expressionists, as well as members of the Transavantgarde movement in Europe, including Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi.
By this period, Warhol was being criticized for becoming merely a "business artist".[25] In 1979, unfavorable reviews met his exhibits of portraits of 1970s personalities and celebrities, calling them superficial, facile and commercial, with no depth or indication of the significance of the subjects. This criticism was echoed for his 1980 exhibit of ten portraits at the Jewish Museum in New York, entitled Jewish Geniuses, which Warhol – who exhibited no interest in Judaism or matters of interest to Jews – had described in his diary as "They're going to sell."[25] In hindsight, however, some critics have come to view Warhol's superficiality and commerciality as "the most brilliant mirror of our times," contending that "Warhol had captured something irresistible about the zeitgeist of American culture in the 1970s."[25]
Warhol also had an appreciation for intense Hollywood glamour. He once said: "I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful. Everything's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic."[26]
Sexuality
Warhol never married or had children.[27] Many people think of him as asexual and merely a "voyeur"; however, it is now well-established that he was homosexual (see biographers such as Victor Bockris, Bob Colacello,[28] and art historian Richard Meyer[29]). The question of his sexuality aside, Warhol stated in a 1980 interview that he was still a virgin.[30] The question of how Warhol's sexuality influenced his work and shaped his relationship to the art world is a major subject of scholarship on the artist, and is an issue that Warhol himself addressed in interviews, in conversation with his contemporaries, and in his publications (e.g. Popism: The Warhol Sixties).
Throughout his career, Warhol produced erotic photography and drawings of male nudes. Many of his most famous works (portraits of Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor, and films like Blow Job, My Hustler, and Lonesome Cowboys) draw from gay underground culture and/or openly explore the complexity of sexuality and desire. Many of his films premiered in gay porn theaters. That said, some stories about Warhol's development as an artist revolved around the obstacle his sexuality initially presented as he tried to launch his career. The first works that he submitted to a gallery in the pursuit of a career as an artist were homoerotic drawings of male nudes. They were rejected for being too openly gay.[31] In Popism, furthermore, the artist recalls a conversation with the film maker Emile de Antonio about the difficulty Warhol had being accepted socially by the then more famous (but closeted) gay artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. De Antonio explained that Warhol was "too swish and that upsets them." In response to this, Warhol writes, "There was nothing I could say to that. It was all too true. So I decided I just wasn't going to care, because those were all the things that I didn't want to change anyway, that I didn't think I 'should' want to change... Other people could change their attitudes but not me".[32][33] In exploring Warhol's biography, many turn to this period – the late 1950s and early 1960s – as a key moment in the development of his persona. Some have suggested that his frequent refusal to comment on his work, to speak about himself (confining himself in interviews to responses like "Um, No" and "Um, Yes", and often allowing others to speak for him) – and even the evolution of his Pop style – can be traced to the years when Warhol was first dismissed by the inner circles of the New York art world.[34]
Religious beliefs
Images of Jesus from The Last Supper cycle (1986). Warhol made almost 100 variations on the theme, which the Guggenheim felt "indicates an almost obsessive investment in the subject matter."[35]Warhol was a practicing Byzantine Catholic. He regularly volunteered at homeless shelters in New York, particularly during the busier times of the year, and described himself as a religious person.[36] Several of Warhol's later works depicted religious subjects, including two series, Details of Renaissance Paintings (1984) and The Last Supper (1986). In addition, a body of religious-themed works was found posthumously in his estate.[36]
During his life, Warhol regularly attended Mass, and the priest at Warhol's church, Saint Vincent's, said that the artist went there almost daily,[36] although he never took communion or made confession and sat or knelt in the pews at the back.".[30] The priest thought he was afraid of being recognized; Warhol said he was self-conscious about being seen in a Roman Catholic church crossing himself "in the Orthodox way" (right to left instead of the reverse).[30]
His art is noticeably influenced by the eastern Christian iconographic tradition which was so evident in his places of worship.[36]
Warhol's brother has described the artist as "really religious, but he didn't want people to know about that because [it was] private." Despite the private nature of his faith, in Warhol's eulogy John Richardson depicted it as devout: "To my certain knowledge, he was responsible for at least one conversion. He took considerable pride in financing his nephew's studies for the priesthood".[36]
Death
Warhol died in New York City at 6:32 a.m. on February 22, 1987. According to news reports, he had been making good recovery from a routine gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia.[37] Prior to his diagnosis and operation, Warhol delayed having his recurring gallbladder problems checked, as he was afraid to enter hospitals and see doctors. His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication.[38]
Warhol's grave at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic CemeteryWarhol's body was taken back to Pittsburgh by his brothers for burial. The wake was at Thomas P. Kunsak Funeral Home and was an open-coffin ceremony. The coffin was a solid bronze casket with gold plated rails and white upholstery. Warhol was dressed in a black cashmere suit, a paisley tie, a platinum wig, and sunglasses. He was posed holding a small prayer book and a red rose. The funeral liturgy was held at the Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church on Pittsburgh's North Side. The eulogy was given by Monsignor Peter Tay. Yoko Ono also made an appearance. The coffin was covered with white roses and asparagus ferns. After the liturgy, the coffin was driven to St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, a south suburb of Pittsburgh. At the grave, the priest said a brief prayer and sprinkled holy water on the casket. Before the coffin was lowered, Paige Powell dropped a copy of Interview magazine, an Interview t-shirt, and a bottle of the Estee Lauder perfume "Beautiful" into the grave. Warhol was buried next to his mother and father. Weeks later a memorial service was held in Manhattan for Warhol on April 1, 1987, at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York.
Warhol's will dictated that his entire estate – with the exception of a few modest legacies to family members – would go to create a foundation dedicated to the "advancement of the visual arts". Warhol had so many possessions that it took Sotheby's nine days to auction his estate after his death; the auction grossed more than US$20 million. His total estate was worth considerably more, due in no small part to shrewd investments over the years.[citation needed]
In 1987, in accordance with Warhol's will, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was founded. The Foundation not only serves as the official Estate of Andy Warhol, but also has a mission "to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process" and is "focused primarily on supporting work of a challenging and often experimental nature."[39]
The Artists Rights Society is the U.S. copyright representative for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for all Warhol works with the exception of Warhol film stills.[40] The U.S. copyright representative for Warhol film stills is the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.[41] Additionally, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has agreements in place for its image archive. All digital images of Warhol are exclusively managed by Corbis, while all transparency images of Warhol are managed by Art Resource.[42]
The Andy Warhol Foundation released its 20th Anniversary Annual Report as a three-volume set in 2007: Vol. I, 1987–2007; Vol. II, Grants & Exhibitions; and Vol. III, Legacy Program.[43] The Foundation remains one of the largest grant-giving organizations for the visual arts in the U.S.[44]
Works
Paintings
This section needs references that appear in reliable third-party publications. Primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please add more appropriate citations from reliable sources. (February 2009)
By the beginning of the 1960s, Warhol was a very successful commercial illustrator. His detailed and elegant drawings for I. Miller shoes were particularly popular. These illustrations consisted mainly of "blotted ink" drawings (or monoprints), a technique which he applied in much of his early art. Although many artists of this period worked in commercial art, most did so discreetly. Warhol was so successful, however, that his profile as an illustrator seemed to undermine his efforts to be taken seriously as an artist.
Pop Art was an experimental form that several artists were independently adopting; some of these pioneers, such as Roy Lichtenstein, would later become synonymous with the movement. Warhol, who would become famous as the "Pope of Pop", turned to this new style, where popular subjects could be part of the artist's palette. His early paintings show images taken from cartoons and advertisements, hand-painted with paint drips. Those drips emulated the style of successful abstract expressionists (such as Willem de Kooning). Warhol's first Pop Art paintings were displayed in April 1961, serving as the backdrop for New York Department Store Bronwit Teller's window display. This was the same stage his Pop Art contemporaries Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg had also once graced.[45] Eventually, Warhol pared his image vocabulary down to the icon itself – to brand names, celebrities, dollar signs – and removed all traces of the artist's "hand" in the production of his paintings.
To him, part of defining a niche was defining his subject matter. Cartoons were already being used by Lichtenstein, typography by Jasper Johns, and so on; Warhol wanted a distinguishing subject. His friends suggested he should paint the things he loved the most. It was the gallerist Muriel Latow who came up with the ideas for both the soup cans and Warhol's dollar paintings. On 23 November 1961 Warhol wrote Latow a check for $50 which, according to the 2009 Warhol biography, Pop, The Genius of Warhol, was payment for coming up with the idea of the soup cans as subject matter.[46] For his first major exhibition Warhol painted his famous cans of Campbell's Soup, which he claimed to have had for lunch for most of his life. The work sold for $10,000 at an auction on November 17, 1971, at Sotheby's New York – a minimal amount for the artist whose paintings sell for over $6 million more recently.[47]
He loved celebrities, so he painted them as well. From these beginnings he developed his later style and subjects. Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature style, slowly eliminating the hand-made from the artistic process. Warhol frequently used silk-screening; his later drawings were traced from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants who produced his silk-screen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.[48]
In 1979, Warhol was commissioned by BMW to paint a Group 4 race version of the then elite supercar BMW M1 for the fourth installment in the BMW Art Car Project. Unlike the three artists before him, Warhol declined the use of a small scale practice model, instead opting to immediately paint directly onto the full scale automobile. It was indicated that Warhol spent only a total of 23 minutes to paint the entire car.[49]
Warhol produced both comic and serious works; his subject could be a soup can or an electric chair. Warhol used the same techniques– silkscreens, reproduced serially, and often painted with bright colors – whether he painted celebrities, everyday objects, or images of suicide, car crashes, and disasters, as in the 1962–63 Death and Disaster series. The Death and Disaster paintings (such as Red Car Crash, Purple Jumping Man, and Orange Disaster) transform personal tragedies into public spectacles, and signal the use of images of disaster in the then evolving mass media.
The unifying element in Warhol's work is his deadpan Keatonesque style – artistically and personally affectless. This was mirrored by Warhol's own demeanor, as he often played "dumb" to the media, and refused to explain his work. The artist was famous for having said that all you need to know about him and his works is already there, "Just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it." [50]
His Rorschach inkblots are intended as pop comments on art and what art could be. His cow wallpaper (literally, wallpaper with a cow motif) and his oxidation paintings (canvases prepared with copper paint that was then oxidized with urine) are also noteworthy in this context. Equally noteworthy is the way these works – and their means of production – mirrored the atmosphere at Andy's New York "Factory". Biographer Bob Colacello provides some details on Andy's "piss paintings":
Victor... was Andy's ghost pisser on the Oxidations. He would come to the Factory to urinate on canvases that had already been primed with copper-based paint by Andy or Ronnie Cutrone, a second ghost pisser much appreciated by Andy, who said that the vitamin B that Ronnie took made a prettier color when the acid in the urine turned the copper green. Did Andy ever use his own urine? My diary shows that when he first began the series, in December 1977, he did, and there were many others: boys who'd come to lunch and drink too much wine, and find it funny or even flattering to be asked to help Andy 'paint.' Andy always had a little extra bounce in his walk as he led them to his studio...[51]
Warhol's first portrait of Basquiat (1982) is a black photosilkscreen over an oxidized copper "piss painting".
After many years of silkscreen, oxidation, photography, etc., Warhol returned to painting with a brush in hand in a series of over 50 large collaborative works done with Jean-Michel Basquiat between 1984 and 1986.[52][53] Despite negative criticism when these were first shown, Warhol called some of them "masterpieces," and they were influential for his later work.[54]
The influence of the large collaborations with Basquiat can be seen in Warhol's The Last Supper cycle, his last and possibly his largest series, seen by some as "arguably his greatest,"[55] but by others as “wishy-washy, religiose” and “spiritless."[56] It is also the largest series of religious-themed works by any U.S. artist.[55]
At the time of his death, Warhol was working on Cars, a series of paintings for Mercedes-Benz. [57]
Films
Warhol worked across a wide range of media – painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture. In addition, he was a highly prolific filmmaker. Between 1963 and 1968, he made more than 60 films [58], plus some 500 short black-and-white "screen test" portraits of Factory visitors.[59] One of his most famous films, Sleep, monitors poet John Giorno sleeping for six hours. The 35-minute film Blow Job is one continuous shot of the face of DeVeren Bookwalter supposedly receiving oral sex from filmmaker Willard Maas, although the camera never tilts down to see this. Another, Empire (1964), consists of eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building in New York City at dusk. The film Eat consists of a man eating a mushroom for 45 minutes. Warhol attended the 1962 premiere of the static composition by LaMonte Young called Trio for Strings and subsequently created his famous series of static films including Kiss, Eat, and Sleep (for which Young initially was commissioned to provide music). Uwe Husslein cites filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who accompanied Warhol to the Trio premiere, and who claims Warhol's static films were directly inspired by the performance.[60]
Batman Dracula is a 1964 film that was produced and directed by Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics. It was screened only at his art exhibits. A fan of the Batman series, Warhol's movie was an "homage" to the series, and is considered the first appearance of a blatantly campy Batman. The film was until recently thought to have been lost, until scenes from the picture were shown at some length in the 2006 documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis.
Warhol's 1965 film Vinyl is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' popular dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange. Others record improvised encounters between Factory regulars such as Brigid Berlin, Viva, Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, Ondine, Nico, and Jackie Curtis. Legendary underground artist Jack Smith appears in the film Camp.
His most popular and critically successful film was Chelsea Girls (1966). The film was highly innovative in that it consisted of two 16 mm-films being projected simultaneously, with two different stories being shown in tandem. From the projection booth, the sound would be raised for one film to elucidate that "story" while it was lowered for the other. The multiplication of images evoked Warhol's seminal silk-screen works of the early 1960s.
Other important films include Bike Boy, My Hustler, and Lonesome Cowboys, a raunchy pseudo-western. These and other titles document gay underground and camp culture, and continue to feature prominently in scholarship about sexuality and art.[61][62] Blue Movie – a film in which Warhol superstar Viva makes love and fools around in bed with a man for 33 minutes of the film's playing-time – was Warhol's last film as director. The film was at the time scandalous for its frank approach to a sexual encounter. For many years Viva refused to allow it to be screened. It was publicly screened in New York in 2005 for the first time in over thirty years.
After his June 3, 1968, shooting, a reclusive Warhol relinquished his personal involvement in filmmaking. His acolyte and assistant director, Paul Morrissey, took over the film-making chores for the Factory collective, steering Warhol-branded cinema towards more mainstream, narrative-based, B-movie exploitation fare with Flesh, Trash, and Heat. All of these films, including the later Andy Warhol's Dracula and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, were far more mainstream than anything Warhol as a director had attempted. These latter "Warhol" films starred Joe Dallesandro – more of a Morrissey star than a true Warhol superstar.
In the early '70s, most of the films directed by Warhol were pulled out of circulation by Warhol and the people around him who ran his business. After Warhol's death, the films were slowly restored by the Whitney Museum and are occasionally projected at museums and film festivals. Few of the Warhol-directed films are available on video or DVD.
Factory in New York
Factory: 1342 Lexington Avenue (the first Factory)
The Factory: 231 East 47th street 1963-1967 (the building no longer exists)
Factory: 33 Union Square 1967-1973 (Decker Building)
Factory: 860 Broadway (near 33 Union Square) 1973-1984 (the building has now been completely remodeled and was for a time (2000–2001) the headquarters of the dot-com consultancy Scient)
Factory: 22 East 33rd Street 1984-1987 (the building no longer exists)
Home: 1342 Lexington Avenue
Home: 57 East 66th street (Warhol's last home)
Last personal studio: 158 Madison Avenue
Filmography
Main article: Andy Warhol filmography
Music
In the mid 1960s, Warhol adopted the band the Velvet Underground, making them a crucial element of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia performance art show. Warhol, with Paul Morrissey, acted as the band's manager, introducing them to Nico (who would perform with the band at Warhol's request). In 1966 he "produced" their first album The Velvet Underground & Nico, as well as providing its album art. His actual participation in the album's production amounted to simply paying for the studio time. After the band's first album, Warhol and band leader Lou Reed started to disagree more about the direction the band should take, and their artistic friendship ended.[citation needed]
Warhol designed many album covers for various artists starting with the photographic cover of John Wallowitch's debut album, This Is John Wallowitch!!! (1964). He designed the cover art for the Rolling Stones albums Sticky Fingers (1971) and Love You Live (1977), and the John Cale albums The Academy In Peril (1972) and Honi Soit in 1981. In 1975, Warhol was commissioned to do several portraits of Mick Jagger, and in 1982 he designed the album cover for the Diana Ross album Silk Electric.[citation needed] One of his last works was a portrait of Aretha Franklin for the cover of her 1986 gold album Aretha, which was done in the style of the Reigning Queens series he had completed the year before.[63]
Warhol was also friendly with many recording artists, including Deborah Harry, Grace Jones, Diana Ross and John Lennon (with whom he posed for an infamous photograph[64]) - he designed the cover to Lennon's 1986 posthumously released Menlove Ave. Warhol also appeared as a bartender in The Cars' music video for their single "Hello Again", and Curiosity Killed The Cat's video for their "Misfit" single (both videos, and others, were produced by Warhol's video production company).[citation needed] Warhol featured in Grace Jones' music video for "I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect for You)".
Warhol strongly influenced the New Wave/punk rock band Devo, as well as David Bowie. Bowie recorded a song called "Andy Warhol" for his 1971 album Hunky Dory. Lou Reed wrote the song "Andy's Chest", about Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Warhol, in 1968. He recorded it with the Velvet Underground, but this version wasn't officially released until the VU album appeared in 1985. He recorded a new version for his 1972 solo album Transformer, produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson.[citation needed]
Cover of copy no. 18 of 25 Cats Name [sic] Sam and One Blue Pussy by Andy Warhol given in 1954 to Edgar de Evia and Robert Denning when the author was a guest in their home in the Rhinelander Mansion.[citation needed]Books and print
Beginning in the early 1950s, Warhol produced several unbound portfolios of his work.
The first of several bound self-published books by Warhol was 25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy, printed in 1954 by Seymour Berlin on Arches brand watermarked paper using his blotted line technique for the lithographs. The original edition was limited to 190 numbered, hand colored copies, using Dr. Martin's ink washes. Most of these were given by Warhol as gifts to clients and friends. Copy #4, inscribed "Jerry" on the front cover and given to Geraldine Stutz, was used for a facsimile printing in 1987[65] and the original was auctioned in May 2006 for US $35,000 by Doyle New York.[66]
Other self-published books by Warhol include:
A Gold Book
Wild Raspberries
Holy Cats
After gaining fame, Warhol "wrote" several books that were commercially published:
a, A Novel (1968, ISBN 0-8021-3553-6) is a literal transcription– containing spelling errors and phonetically written background noise and mumbling– of audio recordings of Ondine and several of Andy Warhol's friends hanging out at the Factory, talking, going out.[citation needed]
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again) (1975, ISBN 0-15-671720-4)– according to Pat Hackett's introduction to The Andy Warhol Diaries, Pat Hackett did the transcriptions and text for the book based on daily phone conversations, sometimes (when Warhol was traveling) using audio cassettes that Andy Warhol gave her. Said cassettes contained conversations with Brigid Berlin (also known as Brigid Polk) and former Interview magazine editor Bob Colacello.[citation needed]
Popism: The Warhol Sixties (1980, ISBN 0-15-672960-1), authored by Warhol and Pat Hackett is a retrospective view of the sixties and the role of Pop Art.
The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989, ISBN 0-446-39138-7), edited by Pat Hackett, is a diary dictated by Warhol to Hackett in daily phone conversations. Warhol started the diary to keep track of his expenses after being audited, although it soon evolved to include his personal and cultural observations.[67]
Warhol created the fashion magazine Interview that is still published today. The loopy title script on the cover is thought to be either his own handwriting or that of his mother, Julia Warhola, who would often do text work for his early commercial pieces.[68]
Other media
As stated, although Andy Warhol is most known for his paintings and films, he has authored works in many different media.
Drawing: Warhol started his career as a commercial illustrator, producing drawings in "blotted-ink" style for advertisements and magazine articles. Best known of these early works are his drawings of shoes. Some of his personal drawings were self-published in small booklets, such as Yum, Yum, Yum (about food), Ho, Ho, Ho (about Christmas) and (of course) Shoes, Shoes, Shoes. His most artistically acclaimed book of drawings is probably A Gold Book, compiled of sensitive drawings of young men. A Gold Book is so named because of the gold leaf that decorates its pages.[69]
Sculpture: Warhol's most famous sculpture is probably his Brillo Boxes, silkscreened ink on wood replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes (designed by James Harvey), part of a series of "grocery carton" sculptures that also included Heinz ketchup and Campbell's tomato juice cases.[70] Other famous works include the Silver Clouds– helium filled, silver mylar, pillow-shaped balloons. A Silver Cloud was included in the traveling exhibition Air Art (1968–69) curated by Willoughby Sharp. Clouds was also adapted by Warhol for avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham's dance piece RainForest (1968).[71]
Audio: At one point Warhol carried a portable recorder with him wherever he went, taping everything everybody said and did. He referred to this device as his "wife". Some of these tapes were the basis for his literary work. Another audio-work of Warhol's was his "Invisible Sculpture", a presentation in which burglar alarms would go off when entering the room. Warhol's cooperation with the musicians of The Velvet Underground was driven by an expressed desire to become a music producer.[citation needed]
Time Capsules: In 1973, Warhol began saving ephemera from his daily life– correspondence, newspapers, souvenirs, childhood objects, even used plane tickets and food– which was sealed in plain cardboard boxes dubbed Time Capsules. By the time of his death, the collection grew to include 600, individually dated "capsules". The boxes are now housed at the Andy Warhol Museum.[72]
Television: Andy Warhol dreamed of a television show that he wanted to call The Nothing Special, a special about his favorite subject: Nothing. Later in his career he did create two cable television shows, Andy Warhol's TV in 1982 and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes (based on his famous "fifteen minutes of fame" quotation) for MTV in 1986. Besides his own shows he regularly made guest appearances on other programs, including The Love Boat wherein a Midwestern wife (Marion Ross) fears Andy Warhol will reveal to her husband (Tom Bosley, who starred alongside Ross in sitcom Happy Days) her secret past as a Warhol superstar named Marina del Rey. Warhol also produced a TV commercial for Schrafft's Restaurants in New York City, for an ice cream dessert appropriately titled the "Underground Sundae".[73]
Fashion: Warhol is quoted for having said: "I'd rather buy a dress and put it up on the wall, than put a painting, wouldn't you?"[cite this quote] One of his most well-known Superstars, Edie Sedgwick, aspired to be a fashion designer, and his good friend Halston was a famous one. Warhol's work in fashion includes silkscreened dresses, a short sub-career as a catwalk-model and books on fashion as well as paintings with fashion (shoes) as a subject.[citation needed]
Performance Art: Warhol and his friends staged theatrical multimedia happenings at parties and public venues, combining music, film, slide projections and even Gerard Malanga in an S&M outfit cracking a whip. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable in 1966 was the culmination of this area of his work.[74]
Theater: Andy Warhol's PORK opened on May 5, 1971 at LaMama theater in New York for a two week run and was brought to the Roundhouse in London for a longer run in August, 1971. Pork was based on tape-recorded conversations between Brigin Berlin and Andy during which Brigid would play for Andy tapes she had made of phone conversations between herself and her mother, socialite Honey Berlin. The play featured Jayne County as "Vulva" and Cherry Vanilla as "Amanda Pork".[citation needed] In 1974, Andy Warhol also produced the stage musical Man On The Moon, which was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas.
Photography: To produce his silkscreens, Warhol made photographs or had them made by his friends and assistants. These pictures were mostly taken with a specific model of Polaroid camera that Polaroid kept in production especially for Warhol. This photographic approach to painting and his snapshot method of taking pictures has had a great effect on artistic photography. Warhol was an accomplished photographer, and took an enormous amount of photographs of Factory visitors, friends.[citation needed]
Computer: Warhol used Amiga computers to generate digital art, which he helped design and build with Amiga, Inc. He also displayed the difference between slow fill and fast fill on live TV with Debbie Harry as a model.[75] (video)
Producer and product
Warhol had assistance in producing his paintings. This is also true of his film-making and commercial enterprises.[citation needed]
He founded the gossip magazine Interview, a stage for celebrities he "endorsed" and a business staffed by his friends. He collaborated with others on all of his books (some of which were written with Pat Hackett.) He adopted the young painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the band The Velvet Underground, presenting them to the public as his latest interest, and collaborating with them. One might even say that he produced people (as in the Warholian "Superstar" and the Warholian portrait). He endorsed products, appeared in commercials, and made frequent celebrity guest appearances on television shows and in films (he appeared in everything from Love Boat to Saturday Night Live and the Richard Pryor movie, Dynamite Chicken).[citation needed]
In this respect Warhol was a fan of "Art Business" and "Business Art"– he, in fact, wrote about his interest in thinking about art as business in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again.[citation needed]
Dedicated museums
Two museums are dedicated to Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, is located at 117 Sandusky Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the largest American art museum dedicated to a single artist, holding more than 12,000 works by the artist.[citation needed]
The other museum is the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, established in 1991 by Andy's brother John Warhola, the Slovak Ministry of Culture, and the Warhol Foundation in New York. It is located in the small town of Medzilaborce, Slovakia. Andy's parents and his two brothers were born 15 kilometres away in the village of Miková. The museum houses several originals donated mainly by the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York and also personal items donated by Warhol's relatives.[citation needed]
Movies about Warhol
Dramatic portrayals
Warhol (right) with director Ulli Lommel on the set of 1979's Cocaine Cowboys, in which Warhol appeared as himselfIn 1979, Warhol appeared as himself in the film Cocaine Cowboys.[76]
After his passing, Warhol was portrayed by Crispin Glover in Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991), by David Bowie in Basquiat, a film by Julian Schnabel, and by Jared Harris in the film I Shot Andy Warhol directed by Mary Harron (1996). Warhol appears as a character in Michael Daugherty's 1997 opera Jackie O. Actor Mark Bringleson makes a brief cameo as Warhol in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). Many films by avant-garde cineast Jonas Mekas have caught the moments of Andy's life. Sean Gregory Sullivan depicted Warhol in the 1998 film 54. Guy Pearce portrayed Warhol in the 2007 film, Factory Girl, about Edie Sedgwick's life.[77] Actor Greg Travis portrays Warhol in a brief scene from the 2009 film Watchmen.
Gus Van Sant was planning a version of Warhol's life with River Phoenix in the lead role just before Phoenix's death in 1993.[78]
Documentaries
The 2001 documentary, Absolut Warhola was produced by Polish director Stanislaw Mucha, featuring Warhol's parents' family and hometown in Slovakia.[79]
Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film is a reverential four-hour 2006 movie by Ric Burns.[80]
Andy Warhol: Double Denied is a 52 minute movie by lan Yentob about the difficulties in authenticating Warhol's work.[81]
Kimiko and John Powers (1916-99) began collecting Japanese art in 1960. Their collection started with the purchase of a unique pair of six-panel landscape screens by Kusumi Morikage and a hanging scroll titled Courtesan Blowing Soap Bubbles by Shiba Kokan. These pieces formed the basis of a grand collection of Japanese art from the fourth to mid-nineteenth centuries. The original emphasis for the collection was haboku (broken ink) paintings. Later, the focus shifted to Buddhist art, especially Zen painting, and literati painting of the eighteenth century. More than three hundred objects in the collection have been documented and published in Traditions of Japanese Art (1970) and Extraordinary Persons (portfolio of screen paintings, 1988; three volume set, 1999). In its Summer 2000 issue, ArtNews ranked Kimiko Powers among the top 200 collectors in the world. Kimiko was born in Tokyo, where she attended university. In 1963 she came to the United States and married John Powers. John's intense passion for art and life helped them make many friends in the modern art world. Together they built up an impressive collection of 1960s contemporary art featuring artists like Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning. Kimiko now resides in Colorado and Japan and carries on John’s legacy and love of all art. A favorite quote of John’s was: “Nothing in the world is yours to keep / You may have but not hold / In the end you receive only that which you have given”
looking on is the department
of its audience
but transaction is assisted
by no countenance...
emily dickinson
Print Contest Entry
Subject: Market
Award: First Place
The Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria (La Boqueria) on Les Rambles in the Ciutat Vella district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
A pair of house finches share seed from my feeder. He regurgitates seed while she plays weak and helpless to encourage the 'transaction'.
My dear flickr friends ... I waited a few moments to photograph this object. In my opinion, the results are pretty good. What is your opinion ? I need comments for all my photos.
A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is frequently used, especially in the context of the film industry, as a synonym for the amount of business a particular production, such as a film or theatre show, receives.
Box office business can be measured in the terms of the number of tickets sold or the amount of money raised by ticket sales (revenue). The projection and analysis of these earnings is very important for the creative industries and often a source of interest for fans. This is predominant in the Hollywood movie industry.
This Box Office is in the Dome Cinema, Worthing, West Sussex, England, and is a grade II* listed building owned by PDJ Cinemas Ltd. The Dome Cinema, which has three screens and a Projectionist's Bar is run by PDJ Cinemas, while Alfresco Services run two function rooms and the cafe at the front of the building. It has closed for refurbishment several times, most recently between December 2005 and July 2007. The name derives from the distinctive dome on top of a three-storey tower over the entrance.
The Dome is an Edwardian building and one of the oldest working cinemas in England, and was opened in 1911 (Brighton's Duke of York's Picture House was opened in 1910). It was opened by Swiss impresario Carl Adolf Seebold. It was originally named The Kursaal — a German word translating as "cure hall". The Kursaal was used as a health centre and entertainment complex by visitors to the seaside town. At the time it contained the Coronation Hall, which was used for roller skating, exhibitions, concerts and events, and the Electric Theatre, the first cinema run for paying audiences in West Sussex.
Following the outbreak of World War I leading residents of the town objected to the German name and after a competition with a prize of £1, the Cinema was renamed "The Dome".
After the end of World War II the Dome went into a steady decline due to heavy competition. In 1949 Seebold restructured his company and remarried. He continued to run the new business, The Rivoli and Dome Ltd, until his death in 1951.[7] By 1955 the Dome was badly out of date and required a refit. The new owners hired architects Goldsmith and Pennells to install a new cinemascope screen. Although the rise of television and sharing the area with four other cinemas must have added financial pressure, the Dome survived to see its sister cinema, The Rivoli, burn down in 1960.
Since the reopening in 2007, The Dome Cinema has continued to run as a successful, fully independent cinema (run entirely separately to the Worthing Borough Council owned Connaught Theatre). The projection ran on two 35mm Cinemeccanica projectors (a Victoria 8 in Screen 1 and a Victoria 5 in Screen 2) until October & November 2012, when both screens were converted to fully digital. Screen 1 now runs on a NEC 2000C, Screen 2 on a NEC 1200C and Screen 3 runs a Barco DP2K-6E. The last 35mm film played in Screen 1 was Looper, and the first digital film was Skyfall. The Victoria 8 Cinemeccanica projector from Screen 1 is now on display in their Projectionist's Bar.
Before adding a third screen in 2018, the Dome was one of the busiest 2 screen cinemas in the country.
The cinema runs a range of different shows for the local area. Currently running are Weekend Morning Movies, Parent & Baby Screenings, Autistic Screenings, Disability Screenings, Midweek Matinees and subtitled screenings. They also run occasional live broadcasts.
Tooth Fairy: "Tooth Fairy 86 to Control."
Control: "Go ahead, 86."
Tooth Fairy: "Mission completed. Transaction made. Now to..."
Teddy Bear: "Hold on there, lady. You forgot my payment."
Tooth Fairy: "Um, Control, stand by." (Looks sternly at Teddy Bear) {whispers} "What do you think you're trying to pull, buster?"
Teddy Bear: "Oh, nothing, really. But if you really want to keep your identity a secret...you know what to do."
(Short silence.)
Tooth Fairy: "Control, I was a little short on that last transaction. Permission to double the amount?"
Teddy Bear glares at Tooth Fairy.
Tooth Fairy: "Check that. Make it ten times the amount. This boy has been very good."
Control: "Permission granted. Return to Headquarters."
Teddy Bear: "Your secret is safe with me now!"
20200822 235/366
_________
August 22 Is National Tooth Fairy Day
National Tooth Fairy Day is dedicated to the mythical fairy who brings money or other gifts to children who have lost teeth. The loss of a first tooth can be a traumatic experience for a young child, but the promise of a gift from the tooth fairy helps make the experience something a child can anticipate. Many English speaking countries practice the tradition of the tooth fairy, in which a child usually puts their tooth in a "tooth box" and awaits the arrival of the tooth fairy when they are sleeping. The tradition started in the United States, but it is based off medieval European superstitions. In England, it is said that children were to burn their baby teeth so they wouldn’t experience hardship in the afterlife, and so that witches would not find the teeth, as it was thought witches could control someone if they got their teeth. It was not until the 20th century that the modern day tooth fairy came to be, the earliest reference to the fairy being in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1908. In 1927, Esther Watkins Arnold published her playlet The Tooth Fairy, which helped popularize the tooth fairy with children.
How to Observe
If you have children, the day could be spent talking to them about the tooth fairy. Also, you and your friends could compare how you celebrated the tradition of the tooth fairy while growing up. Finally, you could spend the day focusing on the health of your teeth by going to the dentist, or rededicating yourself to daily proper teeth care.
.
Corner house in North Toronto just sold for a million bucks. Price included these Muskoka style wooden chairs. New owners tossed them out as soon as the deal was signed. No accounting for taste.
a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe. ~Victor Hugo
This is our back property line where I love to see how different the sky looks each evening at sunset. It is difficult to get the right crop because there are so many different trees planted all over.
Happy Wednesday to all of you.
This is the one I got into trouble for taking.
No need to explain what is going on here...
Please view on black - Hit "L"
My Website | Facebook | Instagram | 500px | Getty Images
Click here to view all my photographs in a single page!
Follow me on Instagram to see my Personal Best works!
Transaction
Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Pentax Me
Jupiter-9 85mm f2 (M42 mount)
Lomography Lady Grey iso 400
I would imagine every Flickr member received this email today:
"If you haven’t heard, Yahoo plans to sell its operating business, including Flickr, to Verizon Communications Inc. We anticipate the completion of the transaction to occur in June 2017. Upon the completion of this proposed transaction, Yahoo products and services, including Flickr, will be provided by a new Verizon-owned company called Yahoo Holdings, Inc.
In connection with this proposed transaction, Yahoo is updating its Terms of Service. You can review the changes by visiting our Terms of Service
These updated terms will automatically be effective on June 8, 2017, unless you cancel your Yahoo account before then.
That’s it! We look forward to continuing to deliver your favorite products and services."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What a huge loss very early yesterday morning (22 May 2017), when the beautiful old mission church west of Cochrane, McDougall Church, burned down! This was a place that I loved to visit and photograph - a place with such an interesting and important history. I will add the link to my McDougall Church album for anyone who is interested. Thanks to my daughter for letting me know about this very sad news.
www.cochranenow.com/local/fire-leaves-many-with-heavy-hearts
www.flickr.com/photos/annkelliott/albums/72157645848592486
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I'm certainly not getting on very well with my Trinidad photos at the moment : ) Other things keep popping up and they have offered, or will be offering, photo opportunities, too. This morning, I have just posted seven more shots from my day out with four friends, driving the area SW of Calgary, on 20 May 2017.
Part of that morning was spent at our friend, Barb's, acreage, SW of Calgary, enjoying the variety of birds that visit her garden. Thanks so much, Barb, as always, for letting us visit you. Such a joy to see birds like the handsome male Rose-breasted Grosbeak and the Evening Grosbeaks. I so rarely get to see either of these birds.
We then drove the various roads SW of the city, as far south as Turner Valley, hoping to see a few birds. Beautiful scenery in the whole area. In Turner Valley, we called in to see another mutual friend and watch the birds that visited her tiny, but beautifully and thoughtfully designed, back deck. Thanks so much for having us, Jackie - and for the most welcome coffee! - especially at such very short notice!
On my way home from this enjoyable day out, I drove a few backroads, looking for any Mountain Bluebirds. Found this male perched atop his box, which matched his colour very nicely.
In Bluebirds, the blue colour is produced by the structure of the feather - there is no blue pigment. "Tiny air pockets in the barbs of feathers can scatter incoming light, resulting in a specific, non-iridescent color. Blue colors in feathers are almost always produced in this manner. Examples include the blue feathers of Bluebirds, Indigo Buntings, Blue Jay's and Steller's Jays."
www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Mountain_Bluebird/id
www.jstor.org/discover/pgs/index?id=10.2307/4077277&i...
This coming weekend, it is the annual May Species Count. This year, 2017, I am only going to be doing the Sunday Count - no walking : )
"The count goes May 27-28: Calgary birders have been out in force every May since 1979, contributing to a broad census of the constantly changing patterns of bird distributions in North America. Last year (2015) we found 212 species. The count circle is the same as previous years, extending from Olds to Nanton, and from Exshaw to Standard, and includes a variety of environments." From NatureCalgary.
Taken In Rissani, Morocco.
Rissani is the last large inhabited place before the Sahara. hence the souk (market).
I have seen many Arab souks and it never ceased to amaze me the variety of things you can buy.
Rissani does not disappoint. Smells, colours, everything makes you smile inside. One can only feel grateful for the experience.
This is midfuna, the Berber pizza. My only regret is that I did not eat more.
You could let your mind wander on this one. As Dom Cruz says this is a (random movie scene). I love playing with night flicks lately. The low light sets a great mood...
Saint Peter Shopping Centre
Peter went shopping
In our hallowed place of transaction
To think and talk about probability
To keep the gate open for approved believers
To revoke the others who continue to seek knowledge
Our gatekeeper of the significant fell into a moment
And became lost in thought
He let his guard down
There on a humble symbol of power
Laid down to rest
Control
A situation began to unfold
No-one knows who claimed it
But everyone knows it was extensively employed to establish Terra Australis Incognita
To support those of divine grace to access the fruits of this new world
To impose those bereaved from grace and imposed to a fate of generational poverty
Read More: www.jjfbbennett.com/2019/12/melbourne-to-darwin-november-...
One-off sponsorship: www.paypal.me/bennettJJFB
"Dům U Nováků is an art nouveau commercial and multi-purpose building at the address Vodičkova 699/34, 110 00 in Nové Město, Prague 1, near Wenceslas Square. It was named after Josef Novák, a tailor and textile entrepreneur who ran a department store and also owned a tailor's salon. The building has been protected as a cultural monument since 1958.
The house and shop of the butcher Vodička once stood on the plot, after which the street is named. Here, in 1878, brothers Antonín and Josef Novák, originally from Česká Třebová, bought a house and a thread and toy store, a former brewery, U Štajgrů, for a relatively low sum. The brothers acquired the store from a seriously ill owner who died three days after the transaction. The brothers focused their business only on the sale of textiles. After the death of Antonín Novák, Josef takes over the management of the company, successfully develops it and expands the product range to include tailoring and fashion.
The house was built between 1901 and 1904 according to the design of the famous architect Osvald Polívka. It is a multifunctional business palace with an arcade, shops and facilities, offices, sports halls, a playroom and U Nováků theater for 700 spectators and a cabaret hall.
The client and owner of the building, Josef Novák, died two years after its completion in 1906, at the age of 51, but the name J. Novák remained on the building for a long time and was returned to the building after the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
The building has rich art nouveau stucco and sgraffito decoration, it was originally designed as a department store with luxury fashion and jewelery goods. The prototype of the concept was contemporary department stores with corridors with large glass windows, created mainly in Paris, Milan or Naples. The passage of the house was only the second in Prague and excelled in the number of shops. In 1912, the painter Jan Preissler decorated it with a wall allegorical fresco Trade and Industry.
In the 30s of the 20th century, the U Nováků theater housed the Liberated Theater of Jan Werich, Jiří Voskovec and Jaroslav Ježek, which moved here from the Na Slupi Theatre.
The New Town (Czech: Nové Město) is a quarter in the city of Prague in the Czech Republic. New Town is the youngest and largest of the five independent (from the Middle Ages until 1784) towns that today comprise the historic center of modern Prague. New Town was founded in 1348 by Charles IV just outside the city walls to the east and south of the Old Town and encompassed an area of 7.5 km²; about three times the size of the Old Town. The population of Prague in 1378 was well over 40,000, perhaps as much as twice that, making it the 4th most populated city north of the Alps and, by area, the 3rd largest city in Europe. Although New Town can trace its current layout to its construction in the 14th century, only few churches and administrative buildings from this time survive. There are many secular and educational buildings in New Town, but also especially magnificent gothic and baroque churches. These nevertheless are not the main drawing points for tourists. New Town's most famous landmark is Wenceslas Square, which was originally built as a horsemarket and now functions as a center of commerce and tourism. In the 15th century, the Novoměstská radnice, or New Town Hall, was the site of the first of the three defenestrations of Prague.
Prague (/ˈprɑːɡ/ PRAHG; Czech: Praha [ˈpraɦa]; German: Prag [pʁaːk]; Latin: Praga) is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate oceanic climate, with relatively warm summers and chilly winters.
Prague is a political, cultural, and economic hub of central Europe, with a rich history and Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architectures. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and residence of several Holy Roman Emperors, most notably Charles IV (r. 1346–1378) and Rudolf II (r. 1575–1611).
It was an important city to the Habsburg monarchy and Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city played major roles in the Bohemian and the Protestant Reformations, the Thirty Years' War and in 20th-century history as the capital of Czechoslovakia between the World Wars and the post-war Communist era.
Prague is home to a number of well-known cultural attractions, many of which survived the violence and destruction of 20th-century Europe. Main attractions include Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town Square with the Prague astronomical clock, the Jewish Quarter, Petřín hill and Vyšehrad. Since 1992, the historic center of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
The city has more than ten major museums, along with numerous theatres, galleries, cinemas, and other historical exhibits. An extensive modern public transportation system connects the city. It is home to a wide range of public and private schools, including Charles University in Prague, the oldest university in Central Europe.
Prague is classified as a "Alpha-" global city according to GaWC studies. In 2019, the city was ranked as 69th most livable city in the world by Mercer. In the same year, the PICSA Index ranked the city as 13th most livable city in the world. Its rich history makes it a popular tourist destination and as of 2017, the city receives more than 8.5 million international visitors annually. In 2017, Prague was listed as the fifth most visited European city after London, Paris, Rome, and Istanbul.
Bohemia (Latin Bohemia, German Böhmen, Polish Czechy) is a region in the west of the Czech Republic. Previously, as a kingdom, they were the center of the Czech Crown. The root of the word Czech probably corresponds to the meaning of man. The Latin equivalent of Bohemia, originally Boiohaemum (literally "land of Battles"), which over time also influenced the names in other languages, is derived from the Celtic tribe of the Boios, who lived in this area from the 4th to the 1st century BC Bohemia on it borders Germany in the west, Austria in the south, Moravia in the east and Poland in the north. Geographically, they are bounded from the north, west and south by a chain of mountains, the highest of which are the Krkonoše Mountains, in which the highest mountain of Bohemia, Sněžka, is also located. The most important rivers are the Elbe and the Vltava, with the fertile Polabean Plain extending around the Elbe. The capital and largest city of Bohemia is Prague, other important cities include, for example, Pilsen, Karlovy Vary, Kladno, Ústí nad Labem, Liberec, Hradec Králové, Pardubice and České Budějovice, Jihlava also lies partly on the historical territory of Bohemia." - info from Wikipedia.
Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.