In which I drag my sister Megs to an opening at the Warhol
Saturday night, you know-- the night before the Super Bowl, I forced my sister Megs into servitude to accompany me to an opening at the Warhol. Actually, she came with me willingly because she had no other plans and I offered to pay.
The Warhol is showing the complementary shows of Henry Darger and Grayson Perry. Part s of the "opening experience" at the Warhol were a free drink with admission and this whole "Childhood Fantasy" atmosphere, which involved people dressed like Pixies or wearing paper dresses and giggling at you while they hid behind things. The drink was a sickeningly sweet, indigo colored concoction called The Vivian Girl. The name comes from Darger's imaginary world of his drawings and stories, but it was odd to serve an alcoholic beverage bearing this name when Darger's work is very much about protecting innocence of the Seven Vivian Girls.
The drink
It made me do this
The Darger show had a good sampling from his story of the Vivian Girls. While he is referred to as THE Outsider Artist of Outsider Artists, I thought his techniques were remarkably similar to academically trained artists. Oddly enough, what impressed me most was his attention to "getting it right," and for him that included studying (possibly even tracing) newspaper comic strips, ads, and several children's coloring books. He would tear out pages from coloring books, scribble some sort of note on it, and copy them in his illustrations. Since this show was at the Warhol, and since this is a Catholic Mommy blog, I feel the need to point out that Darger was, by all accounts, a daily Mass go-er (much like Warhol, but don't let anyone let that get around). I overheard some girl describe to her companion in the Darger exhibit that he "was a janitor at a Catholic School, a really creepy pedophile, and no one knew any of this until after he died." Funny, I haven't found anything in even my limited research on the subject to substantiate that. He worked in a Catholic hospital, not a school. He went to Mass daily and was likely celibate his whole life (because he had a sister that was adopted out of the family and he was afraid of having a liaison with his sister). While no one can know what was going on in his head, his behavior in the world was without blemish. I wonder if it is possible for a contemporary audience to view his work without immediately assuming he must have been a perv.
The other exhibit was of a past Turner Prize winner named Grayson Perry. Grayson Perry's pairing with Darger seems a no-brainer, since Perry has said that Darger was influential to his own work. Perry's pottery is similar to the Darger drawings in that each one is covered in characters, text, and symbols, and portrays some narrative. But while Darger is obsessed with innocence, Perry's art exists in a world where innocence is in the past tense, if it ever existed at all. Some of that certainly can be attributed to Perry's own biography-violence, child abuse, hard-core sex. Not to say that I wasn't impressed by the Perry show. His work in ceramics is really something to behold. Golden Ghosts has such cool layers of decorative and illustrative elements. No wonder when I googled him for images it came up the most. He had another vessel that I can't remember the name of that consisted of segments sewn together. Impressive even to someone who knows nothing about art like me. There were also at least two large drawings by Perry, something I wasn't really familiar with before the show. One was called the Map of an Englishman. It was full of such great detail of a man's life, with much real estate dedicated to football, women, wanking, and beer, and variations thereof. It is a really fun piece.
One thing I haven't mentioned about Perry is not critical to understanding his work, but all part of the fun of seeing Grayson Perry in person. You see, Perry, despite being married with a child, has a cross-dressing alter-ego named Claire. As a child he escaped his own childhood horrors by creating an imaginary realm by dressing up in his sister's clothes. Claire is frequently the one who attends the big events. Claire accepted the Turner Prize. Claire was at the Warhol.
Now, it may have been a coincidence, but over that black dress, he wore a lovely gold coat. (Get it? Night before the Super Bowl? Pittsburgh? Super Bowl?)
Despite how much fun Megs and I had, I don't think I will be doing an opening again at the Warhol, unless it is for someone I know or whose work I absolutely love. I would have known better had I read Pittsburgh Magazine before, but I only bought it today (because Sidney Crosby is on the cover). Pittsburgh Magazine devotes more lines to this opening in its Nightlife section than in its Arts section. In fact, the Nightlife editor spotlighted the opening. That would have clued me in that it really wouldn't have been my scene. There was definitely an arts crowd there, some of the same faces I have seen at Unblurred and other arts events in the city. There were also a lot of people for whom this was just the first stop on their night out. A lot of Marc Jacobs and Marc Jacobs rip-offs. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'm just not a Nightlife kind of person anymore. I would have liked to have been around more people excited about the art and not there for the scene. And quite frankly, $15 is too high a cover charge for me for a party with crappy drinks and uninteresting music. I guess this time it was worth it to experience Grayson Perry in person at a big event (I never would have that photo, now would I?), but I don't think I'll do it again.
The Warhol is showing the complementary shows of Henry Darger and Grayson Perry. Part s of the "opening experience" at the Warhol were a free drink with admission and this whole "Childhood Fantasy" atmosphere, which involved people dressed like Pixies or wearing paper dresses and giggling at you while they hid behind things. The drink was a sickeningly sweet, indigo colored concoction called The Vivian Girl. The name comes from Darger's imaginary world of his drawings and stories, but it was odd to serve an alcoholic beverage bearing this name when Darger's work is very much about protecting innocence of the Seven Vivian Girls.
The drink
It made me do this
The Darger show had a good sampling from his story of the Vivian Girls. While he is referred to as THE Outsider Artist of Outsider Artists, I thought his techniques were remarkably similar to academically trained artists. Oddly enough, what impressed me most was his attention to "getting it right," and for him that included studying (possibly even tracing) newspaper comic strips, ads, and several children's coloring books. He would tear out pages from coloring books, scribble some sort of note on it, and copy them in his illustrations. Since this show was at the Warhol, and since this is a Catholic Mommy blog, I feel the need to point out that Darger was, by all accounts, a daily Mass go-er (much like Warhol, but don't let anyone let that get around). I overheard some girl describe to her companion in the Darger exhibit that he "was a janitor at a Catholic School, a really creepy pedophile, and no one knew any of this until after he died." Funny, I haven't found anything in even my limited research on the subject to substantiate that. He worked in a Catholic hospital, not a school. He went to Mass daily and was likely celibate his whole life (because he had a sister that was adopted out of the family and he was afraid of having a liaison with his sister). While no one can know what was going on in his head, his behavior in the world was without blemish. I wonder if it is possible for a contemporary audience to view his work without immediately assuming he must have been a perv.
The other exhibit was of a past Turner Prize winner named Grayson Perry. Grayson Perry's pairing with Darger seems a no-brainer, since Perry has said that Darger was influential to his own work. Perry's pottery is similar to the Darger drawings in that each one is covered in characters, text, and symbols, and portrays some narrative. But while Darger is obsessed with innocence, Perry's art exists in a world where innocence is in the past tense, if it ever existed at all. Some of that certainly can be attributed to Perry's own biography-violence, child abuse, hard-core sex. Not to say that I wasn't impressed by the Perry show. His work in ceramics is really something to behold. Golden Ghosts has such cool layers of decorative and illustrative elements. No wonder when I googled him for images it came up the most. He had another vessel that I can't remember the name of that consisted of segments sewn together. Impressive even to someone who knows nothing about art like me. There were also at least two large drawings by Perry, something I wasn't really familiar with before the show. One was called the Map of an Englishman. It was full of such great detail of a man's life, with much real estate dedicated to football, women, wanking, and beer, and variations thereof. It is a really fun piece.
One thing I haven't mentioned about Perry is not critical to understanding his work, but all part of the fun of seeing Grayson Perry in person. You see, Perry, despite being married with a child, has a cross-dressing alter-ego named Claire. As a child he escaped his own childhood horrors by creating an imaginary realm by dressing up in his sister's clothes. Claire is frequently the one who attends the big events. Claire accepted the Turner Prize. Claire was at the Warhol.
Now, it may have been a coincidence, but over that black dress, he wore a lovely gold coat. (Get it? Night before the Super Bowl? Pittsburgh? Super Bowl?)
Despite how much fun Megs and I had, I don't think I will be doing an opening again at the Warhol, unless it is for someone I know or whose work I absolutely love. I would have known better had I read Pittsburgh Magazine before, but I only bought it today (because Sidney Crosby is on the cover). Pittsburgh Magazine devotes more lines to this opening in its Nightlife section than in its Arts section. In fact, the Nightlife editor spotlighted the opening. That would have clued me in that it really wouldn't have been my scene. There was definitely an arts crowd there, some of the same faces I have seen at Unblurred and other arts events in the city. There were also a lot of people for whom this was just the first stop on their night out. A lot of Marc Jacobs and Marc Jacobs rip-offs. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'm just not a Nightlife kind of person anymore. I would have liked to have been around more people excited about the art and not there for the scene. And quite frankly, $15 is too high a cover charge for me for a party with crappy drinks and uninteresting music. I guess this time it was worth it to experience Grayson Perry in person at a big event (I never would have that photo, now would I?), but I don't think I'll do it again.
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