ah, a passionate people
i have nothing to do lately. Caitlin has gone to drive Ben to school in Canada, and i can't think of anyone else i'd like to spend time with. i miss the atmosphere of transience, bah.
***
tonight i watched Absolut Warhola, about Andy Warhol's relatives in eastern Slovakia. i've been liking Warhol more and more since i read what Hrabal said about him, about his sister and her folk songs, and about all the little Jesuses. the movie was all right, very pretty, creased faces and cows, but completely stupid reviews:
Miková, in Ruthenia, Slovakia, doesn't have a lot to shout about, but it's where Andy Warhol's parents hailed from, and as someone comments, Andy is 'way more famous than Vasil Bilak'. Indeed. This jokey yet profound documentary reveals the poverty and ignorance of a peasant community on the cold side of the Iron Curtain, held up against the iconic Americana celebrated in Warhol's Pop Art. He used to send his cousins high heel shoes. They knew he was a painter, but not that he was an artist. To a man they insist that no homosexual ever came from Miková. There's a Warhol Museum nearby, but the roof leaks, and they won't let the gypsies in. If you want to send donations, have a pen handy, the mayor reads out the account number to camera.
and that would be an awful purpose for a movie; cute juxtapositions, ignorant peasants [what does it mean to call someone a peasant? not only that they are simple, but also that they're in some way outdated, that their status is somehow feudal] very proud of their tenuous little link to high culture; the artist's relatives going out mushrooming, drinking slivovice, singing folk songs; they couldn't even recognize his art, they made his paintings into toys for their children and put the rest in the cellar to get destroyed in a flood. even the Campbell's Soup was turned into something of an artifact among these people; they sniffed it and thought it might be poison. funny, because Pop Art was about breaking the dichotomy between the producers and consumers, high culture and low culture, the elite and the masses; hence the cans of Campbell's soup, the mass-produced art, etc., that's standard. but if his means don't apply directly to eastern Slovakia, shouldn't it be the filmmaker's job to do so? apply Warhol's ethos to his relatives' lives, feudal as they may be.
because i think they did understand his art; his beautiful great-niece who embroidered his painting of Marilyn Monroe and also did her hair just like it, his aunt who looks in the mirror and says she looks like a little frog, an ugly old woman; his cousin with his stories: a few months ago i drank a glass of gasoline, i thought it was raspberry juice and i found a dead man in the woods, his head was torn off, he had just gone mushrooming. Painted Bird stories, and probably just as truthful.
***
tonight i watched Absolut Warhola, about Andy Warhol's relatives in eastern Slovakia. i've been liking Warhol more and more since i read what Hrabal said about him, about his sister and her folk songs, and about all the little Jesuses. the movie was all right, very pretty, creased faces and cows, but completely stupid reviews:
Miková, in Ruthenia, Slovakia, doesn't have a lot to shout about, but it's where Andy Warhol's parents hailed from, and as someone comments, Andy is 'way more famous than Vasil Bilak'. Indeed. This jokey yet profound documentary reveals the poverty and ignorance of a peasant community on the cold side of the Iron Curtain, held up against the iconic Americana celebrated in Warhol's Pop Art. He used to send his cousins high heel shoes. They knew he was a painter, but not that he was an artist. To a man they insist that no homosexual ever came from Miková. There's a Warhol Museum nearby, but the roof leaks, and they won't let the gypsies in. If you want to send donations, have a pen handy, the mayor reads out the account number to camera.
and that would be an awful purpose for a movie; cute juxtapositions, ignorant peasants [what does it mean to call someone a peasant? not only that they are simple, but also that they're in some way outdated, that their status is somehow feudal] very proud of their tenuous little link to high culture; the artist's relatives going out mushrooming, drinking slivovice, singing folk songs; they couldn't even recognize his art, they made his paintings into toys for their children and put the rest in the cellar to get destroyed in a flood. even the Campbell's Soup was turned into something of an artifact among these people; they sniffed it and thought it might be poison. funny, because Pop Art was about breaking the dichotomy between the producers and consumers, high culture and low culture, the elite and the masses; hence the cans of Campbell's soup, the mass-produced art, etc., that's standard. but if his means don't apply directly to eastern Slovakia, shouldn't it be the filmmaker's job to do so? apply Warhol's ethos to his relatives' lives, feudal as they may be.
because i think they did understand his art; his beautiful great-niece who embroidered his painting of Marilyn Monroe and also did her hair just like it, his aunt who looks in the mirror and says she looks like a little frog, an ugly old woman; his cousin with his stories: a few months ago i drank a glass of gasoline, i thought it was raspberry juice and i found a dead man in the woods, his head was torn off, he had just gone mushrooming. Painted Bird stories, and probably just as truthful.