In honor of Art Basel, click through for photos of the art world’s most notorious parties — from Brooklyn art collective CHERYL’s opulently ridiculous dance shindigs to ragers at the… Read More
Andy Warhol
Harry Benson’s Intimate Photos of Cultural Icons
A Scottish-born photographer, Harry Benson’s big break came when he started traveling with The Beatles in 1964. His photo of the band having an impromptu pillow fight at a Paris hotel quickly became part of rock ‘n’ roll history, but his six decades of imagery have captured more than just the music world. A steadfast photojournalist, Benson has shot portraits of every American president from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama. Photographing for Life magazine from 1970 to 2000 and producing more than 100 cover shots for People, the talented lensman has enjoyed unlimited access to celebrities while also spending time in the trenches to report on protests and conflicts around the world.
The subject of an extended exhibition at Staley-Wise Gallery in New York, Benson presents his quirky images of Jacqueline Kennedy, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, R. Crumb, Andy Warhol, and Muhammad Ali, as well as a few recent portraits, including a dynamic 2007 shot of a vivacious Amy Winehouse. Click through to view a selection of our favorite photos from the show. … Read More
Beyond the Banana: 10 Other Great Album Covers Designed by Warhol
Andy Warhol was at the height of his Pop Art fame when created the cover art for The Velvet Underground & Nico’s debut album in 1967. The first edition of the iconic cover had a yellow banana-skin sticker that peeled off to suggestively reveal a reddish banana. While his skill for crafting clever covers would be sought-after right up to his death in 1987, few people realize that he had been actively engaged in making record cover art since 1949. Employing the illustrative line technique of his early drawings to make covers for such jazz greats as Thelonius Monk and Count Basie and the splashy silkscreen style of his late portrait paintings on covers for Paul Anka, John Lennon, and The Rolling Stones, Warhol created some 60 amazing record covers over 40 years. Click though to view a selection our 10 favorites below. … Read More
10 Bizarre Interiors Inspired by Pop Culture
Vanna Bonta, the space traveling author, award-winning poet, and notable inventor of the lovesuit to promote sex in space and other similarly weightless environments, keenly observed that “popularity is not an indication of quality.” Case in point: Pikachu-inspired cars and engagement photos ala The Phantom Menace. We’re now adding over the top interiors to our growing list of unfortunate achievements by pop culture aficionados the world over. From an exact recreation of the Starship Enterprise’s famous flight deck in a London flat to a baby’s nursery inspired by The Dharma Initiative from Lost, click through to check out some of the most bizarre interiors that take obsession to another level entirely. … Read More
Video Reveals What Andy Warhol Really Did in the Studio
A few months ago, we rounded up some fascinating footage of famous artists at work. But what about art stars who don’t exactly make the pieces they conceptualize? SFMOMA has unearthed a brief video of Andy Warhol in the studio with a blond man we only ever glimpse from the back or side, as they undertake the approximately minute-long process of printing a silkscreen portrait of Marlon Brando. As the writer Vanessa Place observes, “The Blond is wearing rubber household gloves; Warhol is not. The Blond’s gloves are stained. Warhol’s hands are not.” Warhol may have his hands on the fill blade, but it’s his assistant who’s really exerting the pressure. It’s easy to imagine that, were cameras not present, he might have participated even less in the physical creation of the print. We’ve read about how these images were created in the past, but there’s something more powerful — and, yes, more problematic — about seeing it for ourselves. Watch the clip below and let us know what it suggests to you. … Read More
Vintage Photos of Pop Culture Icons in Drag
Cross-dressing, whether for pleasure or for mischief (or for plays or films), is no new phenomenon. Every little child experiments with putting on the opposite gender’s designated garb, all on-stage women in Elizabethan theatre were played by men, and many people of both sexes have dressed in drag for a variety of reasons, from personal to professional. So why should our pop culture icons be any different? Click through to join in our celebration of drag in all its forms, and see some of our favorite musicians, artists and writers (though by no means a complete selection — we couldn’t find any photos of J. Edgar Hoover) indulging in a little cross-dressing from as far back as… Read More
Will the Real Andy Warhol Please Stand Up?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a new exhibit opening next week, and it’s all about Andy. Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years examines Warhol’s creative oeuvre alongside the work of dozens of high-profile artists that have taken influence directly from the Pop Art-maestro. From Jeff Koons to Ai Wei Wei to Cindy Sherman, see how the artist has affected generations of giants. Watch the influence build, compound, and transform: When Warhol turned the images of the everyday commodity of Coca Cola bottles into art, he was making a statement about US commercialism, making the banal iconic. When Ai inscribed a Neolithic vase with the logo, he made an entirely different statement about his own culture, linking the inflated value of historic artifacts and the old traditions they represent to that of a commercial product, making the iconic banal. And so on. From celebrity portraits to queer identity, get a preview of the exhibit in our slideshow. … Read More
20 Nostalgia-Inducing Photo Booth Snaps of Famous People
[Editor's note: It's Labor Day, so your devoted Flavorwire team is taking a break. To keep you entertained, we're leaving you with our most popular features of the summer months. This post originally ran July 14th.] Here at Flavorpill, we love a photo booth. There’s something so satisfying (and pleasantly retro) about the art of the instant photograph, and we love the spontaneity that always seems to come from all those quick photos in succession, with only a small space to work with. But we’re not alone in our photo booth love. Actors, musicians, artists and celebrities of all kinds have also been known to step behind the cheap velvet curtain and indulge in the fun of automatic photography, and inspired by these shots of Elvis we recently spotted at Retronaut, we’ve pulled an Amélie and obsessively collected a few of the results here. … Read More
What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office
Today at Flavorpill, we dug into an oral history of Michael Jackson’s Bad. We looked at the best bookstores on Tumblr. We watched Mike from Breaking Bad in a 1970′s menstruation PSA. We listened to Grandpa Skrillex. We explored writer’s favorite foods from A… Read More
What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office
Today at Flavorpill, we enjoyed some photos from the Little League World Series. We didn’t know how to feel about Urban Outfitters jumping on the David Lynch bandwagon. We watched a bizarre Chanel commercial and wondered if we actually heard a voice saying that men hate women who read.… Read More
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