church
“I like boring things. I like things to be exactly the same over and over again.” [Andy Warhol]
I’m in San Francisco at the moment visiting Casey. So far, the cultural highlight of the trip (aside from drinking in the Castro; my friend gingerbeer and I went out and had a couple of drinks on Monday, and I made a special trip back there last night to have a Tom Collins at an establishment charmingly named “Daddy’s”) has been a special exhibition at the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park: Warhol Live, which explores the artist’s interests in music, film and dance.
My favorite part of the exhibition: the room which showcased the choreographer Merce Cunningham and composers John Cage and Terry Riley as influences on the artist. Warhol is more famous for his association with rock and pop stars (Lou Reed, John Cale, Mick Jaggar, Nico), so it was really special to see Cage and Cunningham featured as a part of the show.
In that room: Two silkscreens of Cunningham by Warhol, with film of one of the choreographer’s works.
The Warhol films Sleep and Empire.
Two more silkscreens: Green Coca-Cola Bottles by Warhol and Texan by Robert Rauschenberg (side note: Rauschenberg’s late 40s/early 50s paintings were John Cage’s inspiration for 4′33″), intended to show the influence of musical minimalism (with its focus on repetitive cells) as an influence on those artists.
Andy Warhol, "Green Coca-Cola Bottles" (1962)
A photo of John Cage and Andy Warhol (which I was unable to find on Google Images, sadly).
Terry Riley’s seminal minimalist composition In C (an excerpt, as the full piece can be an hour long—Casey just said, “Yeah, that song kind of makes me want to kill myself.”) was playing the entire time.
I spent half an hour in that room, bathing in the music, watching the Warhol films for five minutes at a time, counting the Coke bottles, meditating on Warhol’s “boring things” quote as a koan, and trying to arrive at the empty place that all of the artists and musicians who were featured attempt to evoke through their work. It was the closest feeling to “church” that I’d experienced in a long time.