Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior: Part Four
"I have a dream," Martin Luther King said, in his speech at the great March in Washington, D.C in the summer of 1963. Yet his dream of racial equality and racial justice is still a long way away. This is true not only in the United States but also in Europe, Canada and other parts of the world.
In the U.S. at this time, a right wing president Donald Trump slashes one social program after another. The Republican Party, that Trump belongs to, applauds these actions while remaining firmly anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-same sex marriage and anti-trade unions. It also has little sympathy for African-Americans even while about 10 per cent of black people who vote, do vote Republican. Meanwhile millions of African Americans live in dire poverty while Hispanic refugees from Central America are parked in camps that are prisons. Many of these people are separated from their children.
The U.S. remains a country where one in five of its people have no medical coverage or inadequate medical care plans. Many of these people are African Americans and other people of colour. "If all the discriminatory laws in the U.S.," wrote Michael Harrington in the early 1960's, "were immediately repealed, race would still remain one of the most pressing political and moral problems in the United States." Harrington was right. Despite all the anti-racist laws that were passed in the last 50 years and despite the fact that an African American Barack Obama has been president, the U.S. is still more unequal today than it was when Dr. King was alive.
The U.S. hardly stands alone here. In Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the events of 9/11 and the great economic recession of 2007 and 2008, have turned many European countries into very unequal places. In Germany, Italy, France and other places millions of voters have turned away from political parties of the centre right and centre left. Instead they vote for racist and anti-immigrant parties. The social democratic parties survive in some Scandinavian countries. Elsewhere they survive on borrowed time or have vanished.
In eastern Europe, that was freed from the heavy hand of communism, openly anti-Semitic and anti Moslem governments have taken power in Hungary and Poland.
Of course this is not the whole story. 1968, the year that Reverend King was shot dead, saw massive rebellions across the world. Yet they nearly all failed. In France, Czechoslavakia, Mexico and other countries the old conservative governments remained in power. In Vietnam the terrible war dragged on, despite the massive Tet Offensive launched in early 1968. Yet in the wake of these failed rebellions, new groups suddenly appeared to claim equality. Feminists, gays, lesbians, environmentalists, Black Power advocates, Quebec sovereigntists and a massive anti-Vietnam War movement emerged from the shadows.
In the next twenty years women won the right to abortion, ran for political office and often won. Women became lawyers, doctors, business people, and filled many other professions and jobs. Openly gay people ran for office and sometimes won .In Canada for instance, in 1970 there was only one women Member of Parliament, namely Grace McInnis, whose father James S. Woodsworth. had been a famous socialist. Yet nearly fifty years later in 2015 there were 90 women Members of Parliament out of a total of 238 M.P.s This was still not true equality. Yet it was a tremendous step forward.
The rise of the civil rights movement that King was part of, transmitted the elixir of dissent and protest across vast swaths of people in the U.S. and then to other parts of the world. "Let freedom ring," King proclaimed at the 1963 March in Washington. His message was heard not just by African Americans but by many other people in his country and elsewhere. As King's friend and comrade the Reverend Jesse Jackson told the 1984 Democratic convention,the civil rights movement paved the way for many other movements for justice and equality. And the fact that Reverend Jackson was running for the Democratic nomination for president showed how far African Americans had come.
Friday 23 August 2019
Tuesday 20 August 2019
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior by Dave Jaffe: Part Three
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior: Part Three..
Martin Luther King Junior was an apostle of non-violence. All his campaigns were based on the ethic of never meeting violence with violence. In his lifetime King was imprisoned. handcuffed, tear gassed and assaulted. He and other members of his organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were committed to never lifting their fists to reply to violence, King himself was nearly killed twice before he was shot dead.
African Americans paid a terrible price for their campaign against racial injustice. Medgar Evers was one of the American south's promoters of racial justice. He was shot dead in his house in the summer of 1963. A few months later a bomb went off in a church mostly attended by black people and killed four African American children. Arsonists burned down many churches in Mississippi where black people came together and planned to tear down white racism. Police frequently sprayed protestors with tear gas, hosed them with water cannons, unleashed attack dogs on anti-racist marchers and clubbed many of them to the ground.
"I don't believe in this non-violence," one black man told me tin the summer of 1963. To this man it only meant that "we black people get hurt. Nobody else does." Three people were killed in the Mississipp Summer of 1964, two of whom were white and one who was black. Two people were killed in the middle of the 1965 demonstrations in Selma. And when King was assasinated, major rebellions broke out across the United States and involved mostly African Americans
When the fires of this revolt were crushed, close to 170 people nearly of whom were black, had been killed mostly by police or national guard troops. King was a believer in non-violence. His faith in this tactic was grounded in his religious faith and his study of the life of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the Indian struggle for independence. "I haven't been elected as the King's first minister," said British Prime Minister Winston Churchill "to negotiate independence" with what Churchill called "a half naked fakir". This was Churchill 's name for Gandhi. Yet in the end Gandhi's non-violent campaign did win India its independence. King thought he could use Gandhi's tactics to win equality for African-Americans.
Unfortunately many white people in the United States reacted to King's nonviolent campaigns with terrible brutality. They were anything but apostles of non-violence. Even before King was killed police and others killed black people. The great riot in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965 was triggered by police violence. The great Detroit riot in 1967 was met by police and National Guard force. Over two dozen African Americans were killed in this rebellion.
The Reverend King's hopes that he could win his campaigns for racial justice didn't always get respect from American forces of law and order.
Martin Luther King Junior was an apostle of non-violence. All his campaigns were based on the ethic of never meeting violence with violence. In his lifetime King was imprisoned. handcuffed, tear gassed and assaulted. He and other members of his organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were committed to never lifting their fists to reply to violence, King himself was nearly killed twice before he was shot dead.
African Americans paid a terrible price for their campaign against racial injustice. Medgar Evers was one of the American south's promoters of racial justice. He was shot dead in his house in the summer of 1963. A few months later a bomb went off in a church mostly attended by black people and killed four African American children. Arsonists burned down many churches in Mississippi where black people came together and planned to tear down white racism. Police frequently sprayed protestors with tear gas, hosed them with water cannons, unleashed attack dogs on anti-racist marchers and clubbed many of them to the ground.
"I don't believe in this non-violence," one black man told me tin the summer of 1963. To this man it only meant that "we black people get hurt. Nobody else does." Three people were killed in the Mississipp Summer of 1964, two of whom were white and one who was black. Two people were killed in the middle of the 1965 demonstrations in Selma. And when King was assasinated, major rebellions broke out across the United States and involved mostly African Americans
When the fires of this revolt were crushed, close to 170 people nearly of whom were black, had been killed mostly by police or national guard troops. King was a believer in non-violence. His faith in this tactic was grounded in his religious faith and his study of the life of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the Indian struggle for independence. "I haven't been elected as the King's first minister," said British Prime Minister Winston Churchill "to negotiate independence" with what Churchill called "a half naked fakir". This was Churchill 's name for Gandhi. Yet in the end Gandhi's non-violent campaign did win India its independence. King thought he could use Gandhi's tactics to win equality for African-Americans.
Unfortunately many white people in the United States reacted to King's nonviolent campaigns with terrible brutality. They were anything but apostles of non-violence. Even before King was killed police and others killed black people. The great riot in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965 was triggered by police violence. The great Detroit riot in 1967 was met by police and National Guard force. Over two dozen African Americans were killed in this rebellion.
The Reverend King's hopes that he could win his campaigns for racial justice didn't always get respect from American forces of law and order.
Monday 19 August 2019
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior by Dave Jaffe: Part Two.
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior : Part Two.
The officially approved story of Martin Luther King Junior's life usually ends in 1965. By the middle of this year King had won the Nobel Peace prize, played a major role in the desegregation of the American South and had created tremendous pressure on then president Lyndon Johnson to pass a Voting Rights Act. This act for the first time in a hundred years enabled many African Americans, especially those in the south to vote in elections.
After this, King's later acts aren't mentioned. Then under the very conservative presidency of Ronald Reagan, King's birthday on January 15th was proclaimed a national holiday. "King's elevation to national sainthood during the 1980's and 1990's," writes historian Tom Adam Davies, "was freighted with political purpose."
Davies is a lecturer in American History at the University of Sussex in England. He notes that the struggle for black equality in the U.S.A., from about 1954 to 1965 is celebrated by many Americans. "These moments of U.S. history," Davies writes, "are woven into a story of racial enlightenment." It's a soothing morality tale, he points out "in which King's noble civil rights movement opened white America's eyes to racial injustice."
After 1965 and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, everything just great. There's no need for any more marches or the militancy of the Black Panthers or the Black Power movements of the late 1960's. The U.S. is once again a perfect equal society that Reverend King and hundreds of thousands of black male and female protestors, and some white allies had created. Or so goes the officially approved version of King's life.
Of course people should remember that Martin Luther King Junior didn't create the civil rights movement. Let's recap some of the highlights of this great tide of protest that flowed across the U.S. after World war Two. The 1954 Supreme Court's decision in 1954 in Brown Versus Board of Education struck a big blow in favour of equal education for black and white students. Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus where black people were forced to sit in Montgomery and other southern cities that had public transportation. Parks helped trigger the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 that propelled Reverend King into a leadership role in the civil rights movement.
Black and then some white youth sat in at white only restaurant counters in the American south in 1960. The protestors refused to move even when white assaulted and beat them. Young African Americans and some whites rode on buses into the segregated south in 1961. White mobs beat these protestors viciously. Then the Freedom Riders as they were then known as,were thrown into prisons where they were treated terribly. Black people helped create the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 where white and black people tried to register African Americans in the most racist state in the union.
Reverend King was only part of this great movement for racial equality. Yet all movements need a leader and he became the most important leader in this struggle. His assassination in 1968 was a major blow to the African American struggle for justice.
The officially approved story of Martin Luther King Junior's life usually ends in 1965. By the middle of this year King had won the Nobel Peace prize, played a major role in the desegregation of the American South and had created tremendous pressure on then president Lyndon Johnson to pass a Voting Rights Act. This act for the first time in a hundred years enabled many African Americans, especially those in the south to vote in elections.
After this, King's later acts aren't mentioned. Then under the very conservative presidency of Ronald Reagan, King's birthday on January 15th was proclaimed a national holiday. "King's elevation to national sainthood during the 1980's and 1990's," writes historian Tom Adam Davies, "was freighted with political purpose."
Davies is a lecturer in American History at the University of Sussex in England. He notes that the struggle for black equality in the U.S.A., from about 1954 to 1965 is celebrated by many Americans. "These moments of U.S. history," Davies writes, "are woven into a story of racial enlightenment." It's a soothing morality tale, he points out "in which King's noble civil rights movement opened white America's eyes to racial injustice."
After 1965 and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, everything just great. There's no need for any more marches or the militancy of the Black Panthers or the Black Power movements of the late 1960's. The U.S. is once again a perfect equal society that Reverend King and hundreds of thousands of black male and female protestors, and some white allies had created. Or so goes the officially approved version of King's life.
Of course people should remember that Martin Luther King Junior didn't create the civil rights movement. Let's recap some of the highlights of this great tide of protest that flowed across the U.S. after World war Two. The 1954 Supreme Court's decision in 1954 in Brown Versus Board of Education struck a big blow in favour of equal education for black and white students. Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus where black people were forced to sit in Montgomery and other southern cities that had public transportation. Parks helped trigger the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 that propelled Reverend King into a leadership role in the civil rights movement.
Black and then some white youth sat in at white only restaurant counters in the American south in 1960. The protestors refused to move even when white assaulted and beat them. Young African Americans and some whites rode on buses into the segregated south in 1961. White mobs beat these protestors viciously. Then the Freedom Riders as they were then known as,were thrown into prisons where they were treated terribly. Black people helped create the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 where white and black people tried to register African Americans in the most racist state in the union.
Reverend King was only part of this great movement for racial equality. Yet all movements need a leader and he became the most important leader in this struggle. His assassination in 1968 was a major blow to the African American struggle for justice.
Saturday 17 August 2019
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Juniosr by Dave Jaffe. Part One
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior by Dave Jaffe.
Come. Let us now praise Martin Luther King Junior a very exceptional American.. So many people in the United States have done so. This short dark skinned minister shook America to its foundations between 1955 and 1968. His struggle for justice for African Americans and later for others ended when he was shot dead while still only in his late 30's.
In fact whatever your politics are you can praise King. Hard core conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other right wingers have done so. So do American liberals. Yet there's a crucial difference that looms between the two political camps in America. The left wingers and liberals point out that their county is still a very unequal place and that white racism still thrives.
Limbaugh, Beck and others say no. America, they argue is a post racial country which people like Martin Luther King helped create.
Yet why do right wing pundits and politicians praise King? For the reverend King in the closing years of his very life leveled many tough words at the U.S. of A. In a famous speech at a New York church in 1967 he denounced America's war in Vietnam. He even went further than this. My country, he told the congregation, "is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
The year before in 1966 he led an unsuccessful campaign to desegregate the northern city of Chicago. "Chicago," he said in effect at the time," has few lessons to learn about racism from Mississippi." The state he was talking about was back then the most racist region of America. Yet in Chicago King faced bitter and sometimes violent resistance from white people.
And when he was shot dead in March 1968 in Memphis Tennessee he was in the middle of supporting a civic workers' strike of mostly black people. This supportive role was part and parcel of his anti-poverty campaign to wipe out poverty in America. In fact, Martin Luther King in 1968 was planning to lead a poor people's march on Washington, D.C. King vowed that his non-violent army of the poor would not end their sit in until poverty was abolished in America.
So how could such a left leaning courageous man be praised by white conservatives? It's quite simple. This great man is dead and his earlier deeds are praised. The later King's actions are forgotten or smoothed over. Then after he was killed, his birthday was made into a national holiday.
Let's just recap some of King's great deeds. His great campaign in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and the March on Washington in the same year, led directly to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act abolished parts of the terrible white segregation regime in the southern United States. Then this father of four led a march through Selma and the state of Alabama in 1965 that gave the U.S. the Voting Rights Act. This act finally allowed many black people and other people of colour the right to vote. Today many black people and others sit in the halls of power which they were kept out of for many years. These were two awesome changes in the United States.
In the middle of his campaign in Alabama King won the Nobel Peace Prize and his face and his struggle achieved world wide coverage. As people might have said back then, if the internet had been around "King and his struggle for racial justice went viral."
Come. Let us now praise Martin Luther King Junior a very exceptional American.. So many people in the United States have done so. This short dark skinned minister shook America to its foundations between 1955 and 1968. His struggle for justice for African Americans and later for others ended when he was shot dead while still only in his late 30's.
In fact whatever your politics are you can praise King. Hard core conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other right wingers have done so. So do American liberals. Yet there's a crucial difference that looms between the two political camps in America. The left wingers and liberals point out that their county is still a very unequal place and that white racism still thrives.
Limbaugh, Beck and others say no. America, they argue is a post racial country which people like Martin Luther King helped create.
Yet why do right wing pundits and politicians praise King? For the reverend King in the closing years of his very life leveled many tough words at the U.S. of A. In a famous speech at a New York church in 1967 he denounced America's war in Vietnam. He even went further than this. My country, he told the congregation, "is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
The year before in 1966 he led an unsuccessful campaign to desegregate the northern city of Chicago. "Chicago," he said in effect at the time," has few lessons to learn about racism from Mississippi." The state he was talking about was back then the most racist region of America. Yet in Chicago King faced bitter and sometimes violent resistance from white people.
And when he was shot dead in March 1968 in Memphis Tennessee he was in the middle of supporting a civic workers' strike of mostly black people. This supportive role was part and parcel of his anti-poverty campaign to wipe out poverty in America. In fact, Martin Luther King in 1968 was planning to lead a poor people's march on Washington, D.C. King vowed that his non-violent army of the poor would not end their sit in until poverty was abolished in America.
So how could such a left leaning courageous man be praised by white conservatives? It's quite simple. This great man is dead and his earlier deeds are praised. The later King's actions are forgotten or smoothed over. Then after he was killed, his birthday was made into a national holiday.
Let's just recap some of King's great deeds. His great campaign in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and the March on Washington in the same year, led directly to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act abolished parts of the terrible white segregation regime in the southern United States. Then this father of four led a march through Selma and the state of Alabama in 1965 that gave the U.S. the Voting Rights Act. This act finally allowed many black people and other people of colour the right to vote. Today many black people and others sit in the halls of power which they were kept out of for many years. These were two awesome changes in the United States.
In the middle of his campaign in Alabama King won the Nobel Peace Prize and his face and his struggle achieved world wide coverage. As people might have said back then, if the internet had been around "King and his struggle for racial justice went viral."
Wednesday 7 August 2019
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Three by Dave Jaffe.
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Three.
The more I read about Andy Warhol in his biography by Victor Bockris the less I liked him. And even when he passed away in 1987 I was sorry but hardly overwhelmed by grief..
Yet a few weeks ago I was on the point of giving up all drawing and painting. Then I came across
a book on Warhol by Trewin Copplestsone and I was impressed. I have now taken up some of Warhol's art style and I realize how important he was.
His style is easy to copy. I simply find a photo, change the photo a bit and then draw the changed photo on paper three times or more. Then I lightly draw an abstract painting over the photos. As Andy Warhol might say about my finished work, "Wow" or "It's great." Or more likely he might exclaim, "I can do a lot better than that."
For Warhol was a brilliant artist. I have only a tiny fraction of his talent. My art work is competent but no more than that. Even so, his work has inspired me and kept me drawing. So I'm grateful to Andy Warhol no matter what he was like as a person.
The more I read about Andy Warhol in his biography by Victor Bockris the less I liked him. And even when he passed away in 1987 I was sorry but hardly overwhelmed by grief..
Yet a few weeks ago I was on the point of giving up all drawing and painting. Then I came across
a book on Warhol by Trewin Copplestsone and I was impressed. I have now taken up some of Warhol's art style and I realize how important he was.
His style is easy to copy. I simply find a photo, change the photo a bit and then draw the changed photo on paper three times or more. Then I lightly draw an abstract painting over the photos. As Andy Warhol might say about my finished work, "Wow" or "It's great." Or more likely he might exclaim, "I can do a lot better than that."
For Warhol was a brilliant artist. I have only a tiny fraction of his talent. My art work is competent but no more than that. Even so, his work has inspired me and kept me drawing. So I'm grateful to Andy Warhol no matter what he was like as a person.
Tuesday 6 August 2019
Andy warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Two by Dave Jaffe
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Two
Andy Warhol told people in effect in the mid-1960's, "I'm retiring from painting." In fact Warhol never did stop painting. Yet soon he was making films that often bored people. Then he sponsored a rock band called 'The Velvet Underground' and started to write books. He set up a work space in New York City called 'The Factory' where he painted, wrote and filmed movies. The Factory was soon overrun with disturbed speed freaks and heroin addicts. Even so, Warhol had by now become one of the most famous visual artists in the United States.
Warhol showed himself indifferent to the deaths and/or suicides of some of the unhinged people around him. Then in 1968 Warhol himself nearly died. On June 3,1968, a disturbed feminist named Valerie Solanas shot Warhol twice in the stomach as well as one other man in The Factory. "He had too much control over my life," Solanas said after surrendering to police.
Warhol survived but he went around in great pain for the rest of his life. Warhol then went on to discard most of the disturbed people that had cluttered up his life. In the 1970's, he moved into the circle of celebrities. As a child Warhol had adored the film stars of Hollywood like Judy Garland and used to send them fan letters. Now in the 1970's, he hung out with celebrities like Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor, Bianca Jagger, the wife of rock star Mick Jagger and Lee Radziwill. He danced at Studio 54, an exclusive dance hall where only celebrities were allowed in.
"It's hard to get in to Studio 54," Warhol wrote. "But once you're in you could end up dancing with Liza Minelli. At 54 the stars are nobody because everybody is a star."
Warhol also befriended families of loathsome dictators like the Shah of Iran and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. He got to know the Shah's sister and also Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand Marcos. Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand later became infamous because of her massive shoe collection. While tens of millions of Filipinos eked out a bare existence the Marcos family lived high off the hog. Later the Shah and Marcos were overthrown by revolutions.
Warhol also painted many portraits of Mao Tse Tung, another brutal dictator who ruled China with an iron fist from 1949 to 1976. Warhol never met Mao. He just used an official photo as a guide to his portraits. By now, Warhol was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by doing portraits of the rich and famous.
In 1981, Warhol attended the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president. He also taped an interview with First Lady Nancy Reagan for his now flourishing magazine quite rightly called 'Interview'. Left wing critics like Alexander Cockburn raked Warhol over the coals for breathlessly listening to Nancy Reagan and never once criticizing her or her husband for the uncaring lives they were living. As U.S. president Ronald Reagan cut social programs to the bone making millions of poor Americans even poorer. Meanwhile his government shoveled out huge tax cuts to the rich.
The 'Time' magazine art critic Robert Hughes had never liked Warhol's art. Now he went after Warhol again. Warhol, he said, " was the shallow painter whose entire sense of reality was shaped like Reagan's sense of power, by the television tube." All of this was true. Warhol by the way was gay and had many close male friends. Whether he made love to any of them remains an unanswered question.
Andy Warhol told people in effect in the mid-1960's, "I'm retiring from painting." In fact Warhol never did stop painting. Yet soon he was making films that often bored people. Then he sponsored a rock band called 'The Velvet Underground' and started to write books. He set up a work space in New York City called 'The Factory' where he painted, wrote and filmed movies. The Factory was soon overrun with disturbed speed freaks and heroin addicts. Even so, Warhol had by now become one of the most famous visual artists in the United States.
Warhol showed himself indifferent to the deaths and/or suicides of some of the unhinged people around him. Then in 1968 Warhol himself nearly died. On June 3,1968, a disturbed feminist named Valerie Solanas shot Warhol twice in the stomach as well as one other man in The Factory. "He had too much control over my life," Solanas said after surrendering to police.
Warhol survived but he went around in great pain for the rest of his life. Warhol then went on to discard most of the disturbed people that had cluttered up his life. In the 1970's, he moved into the circle of celebrities. As a child Warhol had adored the film stars of Hollywood like Judy Garland and used to send them fan letters. Now in the 1970's, he hung out with celebrities like Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor, Bianca Jagger, the wife of rock star Mick Jagger and Lee Radziwill. He danced at Studio 54, an exclusive dance hall where only celebrities were allowed in.
"It's hard to get in to Studio 54," Warhol wrote. "But once you're in you could end up dancing with Liza Minelli. At 54 the stars are nobody because everybody is a star."
Warhol also befriended families of loathsome dictators like the Shah of Iran and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. He got to know the Shah's sister and also Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand Marcos. Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand later became infamous because of her massive shoe collection. While tens of millions of Filipinos eked out a bare existence the Marcos family lived high off the hog. Later the Shah and Marcos were overthrown by revolutions.
Warhol also painted many portraits of Mao Tse Tung, another brutal dictator who ruled China with an iron fist from 1949 to 1976. Warhol never met Mao. He just used an official photo as a guide to his portraits. By now, Warhol was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by doing portraits of the rich and famous.
In 1981, Warhol attended the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president. He also taped an interview with First Lady Nancy Reagan for his now flourishing magazine quite rightly called 'Interview'. Left wing critics like Alexander Cockburn raked Warhol over the coals for breathlessly listening to Nancy Reagan and never once criticizing her or her husband for the uncaring lives they were living. As U.S. president Ronald Reagan cut social programs to the bone making millions of poor Americans even poorer. Meanwhile his government shoveled out huge tax cuts to the rich.
The 'Time' magazine art critic Robert Hughes had never liked Warhol's art. Now he went after Warhol again. Warhol, he said, " was the shallow painter whose entire sense of reality was shaped like Reagan's sense of power, by the television tube." All of this was true. Warhol by the way was gay and had many close male friends. Whether he made love to any of them remains an unanswered question.
Thursday 1 August 2019
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing by Dave Jaffe: Part One.
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part One
It's possible to like an artist's work but dislike his or her character. Andy Warhol's an example of this.
A few weeks ago I was going to stop painting and drawing, which I've done as a hobby for decades. Yet then I came across a small book on Andy Warhol, written by the British artist and writer, Trewin Copplestone.
After thumbing through Copplestsone's book called 'The Life and Works of Andy Warhol' I decided to copy Warhol's painting style and go back to drawing. Warhol's art inspired me. Warhol's life was a classic American rags to riches story, that also interested me.
He was born Andrew Warhola to a poor immigrant family from Slovakia in 1928. The next year the Great Depression started and wrecked the world economy. Warhol's family was hit hard by this terrible economic collapse.
So Warhol grew up in a poor blue collar family in Pittsburgh, a tough provincial city of steel mills in the American heartland. Yet Warhol's family in the end struggled out of poverty. His father, who passed away when Andrew was quite young, left a sizeable sum of money behind to help his son. For there were some fine educational places and schools in Pittsburgh. Warhol ended up going to the Cranegie Institute of Technology. Here he got a good education in the visual arts.
"If anyone had asked me at the time who was the least likely to succeed," said one of his teachers at the institute named Robert Lipper, "I would have said Andrew Warhola."
Warhola, as his last name was then, was shy and had problems doing academic work. He had, he later claimed, three nervous breakdowns before the age of ten. His skin often erupted into some form of acne. And his hair fell out at a very young age. People, including his older brothers, taunted and bullied him.
Yet Warhol had a great drawing ability and some self-confidence. After graduating from the Carnegie Institute in the late 1940's, he went along with another soon-to-be-famous visual artist called Philip Pearlstein to New York City. He came there with only $200 in his pocket, which is about $2,000 to-day.Yet by 1956, he'd become one of the most successful commercial artists in the United States. By now he'd dropped the 'a' at the end of his name and was simply known now as 'Andy Warhol'. Also his mother had moved to New York City and stayed with her youngest son for the rest of her life.
Though now rich and successful Warhol still wanted more. "I want to be Matisse," he told his friend Charles Lisanby when they took a tour around part of the world in 1956. Lisanby thought Warhol was really saying, "I want to be as famous as Henri Matisse." Back in 1956 Matisse and Pablo Picasso were seen as the greatest artists of the day.
Still by 1966, or ten years later, Warhol was even more famous than Matisse. He painted than silkscreened pictures of Campbell soup cans, the U.S. dollar bill, the by now dead Marilyn Monroe, the soon to be dead Elvis Presley, and car crashes, race riots and electric chairs. Warhol was now acclaimed - or detested- as one of the founders of the art movement now called "Pop Art".
It's possible to like an artist's work but dislike his or her character. Andy Warhol's an example of this.
A few weeks ago I was going to stop painting and drawing, which I've done as a hobby for decades. Yet then I came across a small book on Andy Warhol, written by the British artist and writer, Trewin Copplestone.
After thumbing through Copplestsone's book called 'The Life and Works of Andy Warhol' I decided to copy Warhol's painting style and go back to drawing. Warhol's art inspired me. Warhol's life was a classic American rags to riches story, that also interested me.
He was born Andrew Warhola to a poor immigrant family from Slovakia in 1928. The next year the Great Depression started and wrecked the world economy. Warhol's family was hit hard by this terrible economic collapse.
So Warhol grew up in a poor blue collar family in Pittsburgh, a tough provincial city of steel mills in the American heartland. Yet Warhol's family in the end struggled out of poverty. His father, who passed away when Andrew was quite young, left a sizeable sum of money behind to help his son. For there were some fine educational places and schools in Pittsburgh. Warhol ended up going to the Cranegie Institute of Technology. Here he got a good education in the visual arts.
"If anyone had asked me at the time who was the least likely to succeed," said one of his teachers at the institute named Robert Lipper, "I would have said Andrew Warhola."
Warhola, as his last name was then, was shy and had problems doing academic work. He had, he later claimed, three nervous breakdowns before the age of ten. His skin often erupted into some form of acne. And his hair fell out at a very young age. People, including his older brothers, taunted and bullied him.
Yet Warhol had a great drawing ability and some self-confidence. After graduating from the Carnegie Institute in the late 1940's, he went along with another soon-to-be-famous visual artist called Philip Pearlstein to New York City. He came there with only $200 in his pocket, which is about $2,000 to-day.Yet by 1956, he'd become one of the most successful commercial artists in the United States. By now he'd dropped the 'a' at the end of his name and was simply known now as 'Andy Warhol'. Also his mother had moved to New York City and stayed with her youngest son for the rest of her life.
Though now rich and successful Warhol still wanted more. "I want to be Matisse," he told his friend Charles Lisanby when they took a tour around part of the world in 1956. Lisanby thought Warhol was really saying, "I want to be as famous as Henri Matisse." Back in 1956 Matisse and Pablo Picasso were seen as the greatest artists of the day.
Still by 1966, or ten years later, Warhol was even more famous than Matisse. He painted than silkscreened pictures of Campbell soup cans, the U.S. dollar bill, the by now dead Marilyn Monroe, the soon to be dead Elvis Presley, and car crashes, race riots and electric chairs. Warhol was now acclaimed - or detested- as one of the founders of the art movement now called "Pop Art".
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