Monday, June 30, 2008

A Reality I Must Face.


I was surprised that Thursday's Times article about the Warhol/Not-Warhol case never mentioned Gerard Malanga's desperate shenanigans of 1968 in Rome. I mean, if anybody gets to call a Warhol fake a fake it's Malanga. As far as I'm concerned, the price of the sale has already answered the question regarding authenticity. This story's over. That is, of course, unless you're Gerard Malanga or John Chamberlain. If that's the case, then it's just starting to suck for you. Seriously.


I took these photos at The Warhol two summers ago. The Time Capsule that they happened to have on display contained the Malanga's letters regarding the Che works. Awesome.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I must say that I both love Warhol and despise him on varying occasions. I think that many people appreciate the 'worst' of Warhol's work more than his pieces that had amazing substance (Electric Chairs, Camouflage, most of his self-portraits, criminals series, his later retrospective pieces,etc) but Warhol invited, 40 years ago, the opportunity for all this authenticity crisis when he began the Factory 'system' of making works.

I believe there are still a lot of people who don't know that many of Warhol's works were mainly untouched by him. On some genius level it perpetuates the debate of what is art and what is an artist's end product? But, I don't feel sorry for anyone involved. If nothing else it hurts Warhol's rep, but that's pretty galvanized and not in danger.

It certainly highlights for everyone, collectors, dealers, patrons, etc, that there is a high need to authenticate any work that may (or may not) be a Warhol.

Anonymous said...

re: I don't feel sorry for anyone involved


what work isn't?

Anonymous said...

yes and no

Heart As Arena said...

What 93 said.

Great comments, all.

Mark Barry said...

Nothing will surpass Crazy Horses! You r rad baby!!!

Heart As Arena said...

Heh-heh. They could have been a legendary garage band, and here they are wasting their talents in Branson.