so superstars of my own, hello.
sorry i couldn't do this last night but i was dead by the night. mama also got a little health problem so i spent most of the night taking care of her.
without further introduction lemme get to the point straight. a few of my good friends yesterday accompanied me (with my endless hours of persuasion--uhm--coercion, even) to the new warhol in motion exhibit downtown. it's a three piece event: you have movies shown in taksim in two separate buildings and one in besiktas that is all about the polaroids. we went ahead and saw one of the ones of the movies and here's what i thought of it...
for starters, no need to sugar coat it, lame arrangements. lousy sound system. you basically get only the movies projected to a white wall and you can not hear a word they say (or any of the music which is vital like the one of the velvet underground movie. anywho so it's basicly a series of images which mean very little to random passengers--and means slightly more to those like me who know a thing or two about warhol (or a person or two may be a better way to put it). you miss all the conversations and stuff that would have probably revealed wonderful things about the images.
then again one could say that warhol never really aimed for any higher message or anything but words don't always deliver higher messages--they sometimes describe the time and the mood better than any image can. a simple giggle or a sigh too can deliver a lot. so it could have been handled better, but hey. better than nothing, right?
it was a real trip for me though. everything is 60s and everything is non-conformity everything is sex appeal and everything is visual. it's the other side of the coin of dylan's nonchalance--everything is very pretty and very shallow(!) and very artsy and very overtly sexual--especially one of the reels was skipping i guess, tech problems, and we were stuck watching a scene of the chelsea girls almost image by image some freezing momentarily--there was this young boy in the middle on a bed filled with people and it looked like he was struggling to get up while someone was trying to take of his underwear. that may not even be the scene i have no idea we didn't stick around for long but i kinda felt it in the air that none of us were fully sixties yet.
we got to see about 6 of warhol's movies. i liked them all for different reason obviously, but my favorite was the one called my hustler which told the story of a gay man hiring a male hooker and taking him onto some vacation site in new york and then realizing that since the hooker is really hot everyone's out to get a piece of him. we got to watch the clip where two men and a women were hanging out at the balcony over looking this young man lying at the beach. one thing about warhol's movies is that nothing rushes, nothing chases nothing. everything is shown slowly and everything takes its time. we got to watch this extremely handsome full blooded coke and tv style the american man--who's real name was paul america by the way which i thought was brilliant-- and i'll be very honest he was the most amazing part of the whole exhibit for me: not for the cheaper reasons, but he was such the american image this tall overly proper physique, the bleach blonde hair, the look on his face, he was the ultimate 50s american fella. a bit of neal cassidy you know.
needless to say everyone was really beautiful--or after a while you feel like everyone was very beautiful. second high point for me was the velvet underground and nico piece--i tried vainly to pick lou reed of the lot and there was nico's son running around. it's always weird to see stuff like that--i know nico of her la dolce vita deal, and i know she's been connected both to jim and to bob on different days.
but the best of the best for me was the screen tests of warhol that they projected on to the white wall. i personally think they are the best piece of art warhol left behind. there is something extremely honest and expressionist in their nature that his hyped up movies can not really match. i watched this woman--turns out to be a lady named ann buchanan for about 3 minutes--most beautiful thing ever. she cries on her screen test--i dont know whether it was planned or spontaneous but it was incredible. the way they slow down the visuals made it seem even deeper. i had already watched several of those screen tests--namely bob's nico's and edie's i think--but it was wonderful to watch some people whose names i didn't know. brings a different dimension to the whole thing.
last piece of footage was of the inner and outer space of edie's monologues. my friends were absolutely mesmerized with her beauty. now i'm of the dylan school of thought (he just turned in his bed) and to me edie's always the shallow socialite who gets dragged away by all the shimmering lights. she has a good heart but not the matching personality, she's overly obsessed with her 'ribbons and bows' and is brainwashed. so to me she's always just pretty--hence had everything in her life because she was pretty--she was rich and careless and well, darn me for saying it, but some sort of paris hilton of the 60s in a more art-induced manner. but when you see her face enlarged on the screen you do get a little shaken--she has this beautiful little mouth and large eyes that stare right into the void--you kinda get a feeling of the whole little girl inside image making it girl outside deal. she is pretty, you know, nothing to exceptional as far as i'm concerned because she reeks of image and i feel like she had an idea of what she wanted to look like every step of the way which puts me off of her legendary icon status. i tend to see icons as spontaneous bursts of humanity that can not exist in any other way (which is mostly wrong, i would think, we are all image anyhow) but edie seems too--you know--calculated for precise beauty. but as i said when she stares into your face in black and white you get sad for no reason. you don't get sad when you look at the other superstars but you get sad when you look at edie. perhaps she to me is a broken-hearted woman after all who got treated terribly by the man she liked--and she failed to receive the attention that she tried all her life to recieve because one man was to stubborn to give in.
anywho--whoa this is getting long.
anywho to sum everything up: i always liked warhol but not really admired him a whole lot--i think warhol is a period in time and a mood of existence rather than one incredible amazing artist or whatnot. i think the whole of factory was what should be taken in and felt rather than warhol on his own. the in and out spinning of hundreds of really beautiful people chasing fame and visual attraction. i say attraction for i really don't think they chased beauty in a broader sense but only the visual rules of their day. all the girls are perfect and them men--boy the men are even more perfect--they follow that kerouac way of drifter look with dark hair and flat stomachs and shapely arms--and they are all really good looking. i think the men even more than the women.
one great thing though is not everything feels like you cracked upon a box with all the sex and sexuality involved--you feel like you're enjoying something that bended a few rules of its time (bending a few rules of our times, more likely).
anyways so afterwards we headed out to see the polaroids in besiktas but couldn't do so because they were closed. instead we got to drink tea and stuff and chat a little. a day spent well is a day spent well anyhow, right?
here's the weeping lady for those interested:
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