Folk Art and Warhol

On a driving trip south, I made few art stops. Two stood out, the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and the Kentucky Folk Art Centre.

The top floor, 7 I think, at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh is a wonder of Warhol films and TV episodes this fall. Warhol’s TV talk show with studio visits and sit downs are both a curiosity and annoyance and that is what Warhol wanted with John Waters and Divine, Larry Rivers, and many many more artists, stars, and regular folk . Warhol’s gift at awkwardness, at discomfort, to viewers and sometimes those he interviews may be similar to photos and the process of photographer Diane Arbus, or is it that his work/performance embodies the alienation that products engender in a mass produced society. Walk around the corner on the 7th floor and in most of the next room and hallway you watch Film: Edie Sedgwick eat dinner (two screens), John Giorno sleep (a ringer for a young Johnny Cash), the natural lighting in the day and night of the Empire State building, and other landmark films; an array on walls and screens that divide the room. Warhol said he loved to watch and the quote is sometimes etched creepily into my brain as I move through the rooms, as to what it was he found as a fascinating topic, stardom and the real, what he, or the public, was afraid of, and gay and transgender culture? The films are situated in a way that the tiresome and not at all fascinating anti-film message is not quite lost.

The rest of the museum is a walk through Warhol’s art work, advertisement sketches from the shoe department/store, to later paintings with Basquiat. Gertrude’s/LOT is also on a dedicated floor which shows the art works of women who have followed the ground breaking trail of Gertrude Stein, Mary Cassatt, Willa Cather, and Martha Graham, all who have a connection to Pittsburgh.

The second stop was in a small university town in Kentucky, at the Kentucky Folk Art Centre. For once, I did not take my camera when I could have!! So, I am sorry to have to search the internet for pics. They also had artwork by artists for sale, carvings and paintings. I am including here a you tube video because it does show some of the permanent collection. Up stairs, Robert Morgan blew us away, all that glitters indeed! Imagine a room full of orange, red, gold, spray paint! Colors of Hindu Gods and Goddesses and statues made from found objects in America. A-a-a-amazing.