Gimme Shelter: A short, intense art history

lunedì 18 gennaio 2016

A short, intense art history

In the beginning, Warhol created The Factory.

Then he created the Exploding Plastic Inevitable
Then he produced first Velvet Underground album.
It was in New York, and it was 1967.

Sunday Morning was the opening act of the band.
Warhol imposed Nico on the band, and they didn't want her.
Then Lou Reed had a story with Nico.
That was after her story with Brian Jones.

And Nico acted in La Dolcevita, playing herself.
Brian Jones founded the Rolling Stones and died at the age of 27.
The slide guitar intro in No Expectations was his last testament.

Then David Bowie saved Lou Reed from self destruction.
And Bowie produced Transformer
And Lou Reed wrote Walk on the Wild Side.

David Bowie and Debbie Harry were friends.
And Blondie and Basquiat were friends as well.

Basquiat occasionally earned money as a male prostitute.
He appeared in Blondie's Rapture video, at min 1.53.
Rapture was the first rap to top the charts.
Then Basquiat founded a Noise Rock band called Gray.

Basquiat met Andy Warhol at a restaurant.

Basquiat "SAMO" and Keith Haring were both street artists and friends of Warhol.
Then Warhol made Oxidation: a denigrating urine portrait of Basquiat.

And Basquiat died at age 27 for overdose.
And then Bowie performed Andy Warhol in the film "Basquiat".

Lou Reed wrote beautiful poems about whores, transvestites and heroin.
Then he met Laurie Anderson and later became a Tai Chi master.
Then he married Laurie Anderson, for good.

Bob Dylan didn't like Warhol and The Factory.
He had a story with Warhol's muse, Edie Sedgwick.
Edie was the Factory Girl before Nico.
And inspired poems such as Like a Rolling Stone and Just like a woman,
And inspired Femme Fatale.
Then she committed suicide at age 28.

David Bowie saved Iggy Pop as well.
That was from a psychiatric hospital.
That was after The Stooges.
Then he produced his first album.
Then Iggy Pop wrote Lust for Life with his friend.
And Bowie, Iggie and Reed shared the same flat in Berlin
That was in 1976.
And Lou Reed wrote Berlin.
And Bowie wrote a german Heroes for Christiane F.

Everything started in NY in the late 60's.
And there was much more.

Then Lou Reed wrote New York.

Post Scriptum:
Later, Laurie Anderson presented Diller&Scofidio and their "Aberrant architecture".
At that time, Diller&Scofidio was the most advanced interdisciplinary design studio in NY.
And today, together with Renfro, they are transforming NY.

Post Scriptum #2 (*):

It's interesting to notice this constantly increasing level of censorship along the media, so that the powerful, beautiful, dystopian version of "Heroes" by David Bowie, coming from the multi-awarded, generational film "Christiane F", which I choose to act as the intro of this post, has been nowday considered destibilizing for our young generations.