Warhol's Dream
Páginas: 145 (36088 palabras)
Publicado: 17 de febrero de 2013
20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 1
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 1
Saul Anton
20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 1
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 2
Saul Anton Warhol’s Dream
Edited by Xavier Douroux
20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 1
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 4
Contents
9 21 65 109
Introduction by Pamela M. Lee EMPIRE CENTRAL PARK UNDERGROUND CINEMA 20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 1
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 6
20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 1
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 8
WARHOL AND SMITHSON, OR THE METALOGIC IMAGINATION
Here’s one for the Dream Syndicate: Picture Andy Warhol—silver wig, black turtleneck, the works—waiting a small eternity for Robert Smithson to cross the threshold of an elevator to the Empire State Building. The two have spentthe morning trawling a deserted stretch of midtown Manhattan; and, naturally, their conversation has turned to that most sublime icon of New York architecture. A trip to the building’s observation deck is in order. Along the way—and to his surprise—Warhol learns that Smithson is more than a little phobic about elevators, which variously rouse feelings of claustrophobia and dread for the youngerartist. The back-and-forth that anticipates this moment—a conversation that ranges from Warhol’s virtually motionless, eight hour film of that very building, Empire; to Smithson’s increasingly vertiginous theories of Ultramoderne architecture; to the land artist’s proposition that Warhol start a rug factory—seems no less absurd than the circumstances that prompted the dialogue: a chance encounterat Warhol’s favorite diner, the Star Palace, completely void of human presence save for the man Warhol calls “the best nowhere artist” he knows. This is but one of the bizarre scenarios Saul Anton has conjured in Warhol’s Dream, a fictional dialogue staged between Smithson and his at once perplexed and bemused interlocutor. And it is, of course, a dream—both a discursive and aerobic ramble thatsees the two through New York city, culminating with a strange tête-à-tête in Central Park. In calling this conversation a dream, Anton wreaks havoc with a narrative device popular to sit-coms and made-for-TV movies: the moment when the hero awakens to discover that the remarkable turn of events just transpired is only a dream. “The strangest thing about this dream—what else could it havebeen?—Warhol himself suggests, is its clarity of detail: the fact that every last word of this Smithsonian conversation is recalled with the fidelity of his trusty SONY tape recorder. And so it goes for this book, which borrows liberally from the archives of Smithson and Warhol as much as it spins their peculiar syntax in its own phantasmatic direction.
Introduction 9
20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 119/07/2007
11:21
Page 10
At first blush, an imagined meeting between arguably the most influential artists of the 1960s reads as inspired parody, as if the darkly brooding Smithson—best known for producing work in the most remote of sites—played the titular straight man (or intellectual foil) to Warhol, always dispatching his witticisms with bland indifference; and always at the eyeof the social hurricane. And you would not be wrong to call Warhol’s Dream a deftly fashioned and very funny parody, dazzling in Anton’s capacity to mime the rhetorical habits of both artists. No doubt, Anton has read closely—even internalized—the writings of Warhol and Smithson. His feel for their patterns of speech, their solecisms and cadences, is uncanny. The art historian of the period,however, understands that a dialogue between the two is to the point, and not only because Smithson paid homage to Warhol on more than one textual and artistic occasion; and not only because they rubbed elbows with some frequency down at Max’s Kansas City. Their various writings, to say little of their sculptures, photographs, silkscreens, and films, have played no small role in the language of...
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 1
Saul Anton
20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 1
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 2
Saul Anton Warhol’s Dream
Edited by Xavier Douroux
20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 1
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 4
Contents
9 21 65 109
Introduction by Pamela M. Lee EMPIRE CENTRAL PARK UNDERGROUND CINEMA 20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 1
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 6
20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 1
19/07/2007
11:21
Page 8
WARHOL AND SMITHSON, OR THE METALOGIC IMAGINATION
Here’s one for the Dream Syndicate: Picture Andy Warhol—silver wig, black turtleneck, the works—waiting a small eternity for Robert Smithson to cross the threshold of an elevator to the Empire State Building. The two have spentthe morning trawling a deserted stretch of midtown Manhattan; and, naturally, their conversation has turned to that most sublime icon of New York architecture. A trip to the building’s observation deck is in order. Along the way—and to his surprise—Warhol learns that Smithson is more than a little phobic about elevators, which variously rouse feelings of claustrophobia and dread for the youngerartist. The back-and-forth that anticipates this moment—a conversation that ranges from Warhol’s virtually motionless, eight hour film of that very building, Empire; to Smithson’s increasingly vertiginous theories of Ultramoderne architecture; to the land artist’s proposition that Warhol start a rug factory—seems no less absurd than the circumstances that prompted the dialogue: a chance encounterat Warhol’s favorite diner, the Star Palace, completely void of human presence save for the man Warhol calls “the best nowhere artist” he knows. This is but one of the bizarre scenarios Saul Anton has conjured in Warhol’s Dream, a fictional dialogue staged between Smithson and his at once perplexed and bemused interlocutor. And it is, of course, a dream—both a discursive and aerobic ramble thatsees the two through New York city, culminating with a strange tête-à-tête in Central Park. In calling this conversation a dream, Anton wreaks havoc with a narrative device popular to sit-coms and made-for-TV movies: the moment when the hero awakens to discover that the remarkable turn of events just transpired is only a dream. “The strangest thing about this dream—what else could it havebeen?—Warhol himself suggests, is its clarity of detail: the fact that every last word of this Smithsonian conversation is recalled with the fidelity of his trusty SONY tape recorder. And so it goes for this book, which borrows liberally from the archives of Smithson and Warhol as much as it spins their peculiar syntax in its own phantasmatic direction.
Introduction 9
20-07-07SaulAnton:Mise en page 119/07/2007
11:21
Page 10
At first blush, an imagined meeting between arguably the most influential artists of the 1960s reads as inspired parody, as if the darkly brooding Smithson—best known for producing work in the most remote of sites—played the titular straight man (or intellectual foil) to Warhol, always dispatching his witticisms with bland indifference; and always at the eyeof the social hurricane. And you would not be wrong to call Warhol’s Dream a deftly fashioned and very funny parody, dazzling in Anton’s capacity to mime the rhetorical habits of both artists. No doubt, Anton has read closely—even internalized—the writings of Warhol and Smithson. His feel for their patterns of speech, their solecisms and cadences, is uncanny. The art historian of the period,however, understands that a dialogue between the two is to the point, and not only because Smithson paid homage to Warhol on more than one textual and artistic occasion; and not only because they rubbed elbows with some frequency down at Max’s Kansas City. Their various writings, to say little of their sculptures, photographs, silkscreens, and films, have played no small role in the language of...
Leer documento completo
Regístrate para leer el documento completo.