Discover Top Posts Tagged with #stuart cumberland

Stuart Cumberland (British, 1970), RD 240, 2010. Oil on linen, 240 x 190 cm.

Gerard Malanga, Edwin Denby and Stuart Cumberland meet Andy Warhol in Heaven

Original Warhol photo of Gerard Malanga and Edwin Denny found here.

Less damaged (not nesc. "better") versions with notes found at biblio.com. (The original is only $23k, cheap!), which also has this to say:

The September 1963 issue of Berrigan's now-legendary journal, devoted to the still-neglected poems of Edwin Denby, with the almost infamous Warhol silkscreen covers. The covers on copies of this issue, reportedly executed by Berrigan himself, vary considerably, essentially constituting a Warhol multiple as much as an edition. The compelling front cover image on this copy is sharper and more complete than is usual. Reva Wolf's estimate of the importance of these images is worth quoting in full: "This is the first-known instance in which Warhol used Polaroids for silkscreen portraits, a practice he did not pursue at the time but one to which he would return and which would become his standard procedure for making portraits, beginning in 1970. Even his editorial approach to the C portraits—thoughtfully selecting a few photographs out of several he had shot— would become a customary step in his production of later Polaroid portraits. A comparison of five rejected Polaroids from the Denby and Malanga sitting to the two images he chose to use for the C cover reveals that Warhol selected for the cover those images that were most legible, most centered compositionally, and that would set up a clear narrative which moved from a formal portrait on the front cover—a witty homosexual parody of conventional portrayals of husbands and wives—to an intimate exchange on the back cover" (Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s, p. 22). She also notes regarding the back cover image, “Malanga has recalled unhesitatingly that for this photograph Warhol had specifically instructed him to bend over and kiss Denby.” Uncommon, historically important, and poignant beyond all the ironies.