Andy Warhol

"It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented.  They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. "  Andy Warhol , "America"

By Mark ShanahanGlobe staff It's frequently said about the Velvet Underground that as dynamic as the band could be in the studio, toggling between melody and cacophony in the span of the same four-minute song, its albums paled in comparison to its mesmerizing live performances. So what to expect from a book about this legendary group, which achieved little commercial success but had widespread and enduring influence in rock and alternative music? Is it possible to capture the essence of this strange band — the delicacy and the dread, the beauty and the black leather — without benefit...

In Gob Squad's "Kitchen (You've Never Had It So Good)," at the Institute of Contemporary Art this weekend, the Gob Squad theater collective begins to re-create the plotless and nearly eventless mid-1960s cinema experiments of Andy Warhol. The performers are behind a screen, and the audience members - some of whom will become part of the performance - watch via video projections. The intent seems to be to explore the boundaries between art, performance, and real life. If all that sounds to you like a dose of tedious, black-turtleneck-wearing, art-school pretension, think again.

In Gob Squad's "Kitchen (You've Never Had It So Good)," at the Institute of Contemporary Art this weekend, the Gob Squad theater collective begins to re-create the plotless and nearly eventless mid-1960s cinema experiments of Andy Warhol. The performers are behind a screen, and the audience members - some of whom will become part of the performance - watch via video projections. The intent seems to be to explore the boundaries between art, performance, and real life. If all that sounds to you like a dose of tedious, black-turtleneck-wearing, art-school pretension, think again.

"Factory Girl" is not, strictly speaking, a bad movie. It's something worse: an irredeemably banal drama about some of the most protean, contradictory creative forces of the 1960s. Director George Hickenlooper and his writing team take the story of Edie Sedgwick -- Warhol muse, Vogue's "youthquaker of 1965," speed freak, poor little rich girl, corpse -- and somehow manage to make it conventional. That's the first 45 minutes. Then the movie turns offensive. You can't fault Sienna Miller, the British actress and minor gossip column fixture who plays Edie from her Cambridge art...

ANDY WARHOL By Arthur C. Danto Yale University, 192 pp., $24 Arthur C. Danto, philosopher and art critic, takes Andy Warhol very seriously as an artist, activist, filmmaker, critic of pop and high culture, and celebrity icon. Neither a memoir of the philosopher nor a biography of his subject, this small and provocative work is “a study of what makes Warhol so fascinating an artist from a philosophical perspective.’’ Danto credits Warhol with raising the question of art in a new form.

THROUGH JULY 13 PARIS "The Wide World of Andy Warhol": "All my portraits have to be the same size," Andy Warhol once said, "so they'll all fit together and make one big painting called "Portraits of Society. " That's a good idea, isn't it?" The Grand Palais gives viewers an ample opportunity to answer that question. It's an appropriately grand setting for this very large retrospective of Warhol's portraiture. It's also an appropriate venue in being slightly kitschy and ersatz.

I first encountered Dave McKenzie four years ago at the Sculpture Center in New York. Wearing an oversize, whole-head, papier-mâché mask molded and painted to resemble his head, he greeted visitors at the front door and handed out free bobble-head dolls. Neatly packed in white cardboard boxes, the dolls represented McKenzie himself -- a young, bespectacled, casually dressed African-American who looks more like a computer-science grad student than the famous athletes or celebrities bobble-head dolls usually represent.

By Mark ShanahanGlobe staff It's frequently said about the Velvet Underground that as dynamic as the band could be in the studio, toggling between melody and cacophony in the span of the same four-minute song, its albums paled in comparison to its mesmerizing live performances. So what to expect from a book about this legendary group, which achieved little commercial success but had widespread and enduring influence in rock and alternative music? Is it possible to capture the essence of this strange band — the delicacy and the dread, the beauty and the black...

GLAM PLUS BAM: WARHOL AND EDGERTON At the Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, through Oct. 6. 617-521-2268, www.simmons.edu/trustman Andy Warhol and Harold Edgerton, in their very different ways, are crucial to understanding 20th-century visual history. One helped alter our sense of subject, validating fame as an aesthetic property unto itself. The other created a new way of seeing. Through Oct. 6 they share the space at Simmons College's Trustman Art Gallery, in the amusingly titled "Glam plus Bam: Warhol and Edgerton.

GLAM PLUS BAM: WARHOL AND EDGERTON At the Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, through Oct. 6. 617-521-2268, www.simmons.edu/trustman Andy Warhol and Harold Edgerton, in their very different ways, are crucial to understanding 20th-century visual history. One helped alter our sense of subject, validating fame as an aesthetic property unto itself. The other created a new way of seeing. Through Oct. 6 they share the space at Simmons College's Trustman Art Gallery, in the amusingly titled "Glam plus Bam: Warhol and Edgerton.

"It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented.  They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. "  Andy Warhol , "America"

At this point, we all know there’s a good bit of codependence at play in the forward slouch of celebrity culture. The stars, the paparazzi, the magazine editors, the club owners, the readers — we’re all hooking one another up. Some members of this Hollywood ball of collusion are giving to get, some are just getting, and some — those of us who gaze at the People magazine Star Tracks — just want to breathe in but a whiff of fame exhaust....

THROUGH AUG. 8 LONDON “Henry Moore’’ The exhibition consists of more than 150 stone sculptures, bronzes, wood carvings, and drawings. The largest gathering of the artist’s work in a generation, the retrospective shows Moore’s mastery of multiple sculptural materials, his ability to abstract the human figure while never altogether abandoning representation, and endow his work with an earthy massiveness.

ANDY WARHOL By Arthur C. Danto Yale University, 192 pp., $24 Arthur C. Danto, philosopher and art critic, takes Andy Warhol very seriously as an artist, activist, filmmaker, critic of pop and high culture, and celebrity icon. Neither a memoir of the philosopher nor a biography of his subject, this small and provocative work is “a study of what makes Warhol so fascinating an artist from a philosophical perspective.’’ Danto credits Warhol with raising the question of art in a new form.

THROUGH JULY 13 PARIS "The Wide World of Andy Warhol": "All my portraits have to be the same size," Andy Warhol once said, "so they'll all fit together and make one big painting called "Portraits of Society. " That's a good idea, isn't it?" The Grand Palais gives viewers an ample opportunity to answer that question. It's an appropriately grand setting for this very large retrospective of Warhol's portraiture. It's also an appropriate venue in being slightly kitschy and ersatz.

Mary Jordan's documentary "Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis" is part unsparing explication of a life story, part love-stuck personification of Smith's working philosophy. Jordan seems to get that the only way to approach Smith, to convey his unmitigated avant-gardism to a civilized audience is, in a sense, to become him. The soundtrack is alive with his recorded musings and disembodied audio rants (his breakup letter to mom would make Lillian Hellman blush). The screen is gloriously awash in snippets and condensed interludes from his films and the films he appeared in...

THROUGH AUG. 8 LONDON “Henry Moore’’ The exhibition consists of more than 150 stone sculptures, bronzes, wood carvings, and drawings. The largest gathering of the artist’s work in a generation, the retrospective shows Moore’s mastery of multiple sculptural materials, his ability to abstract the human figure while never altogether abandoning representation, and endow his work with an earthy massiveness.

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Andy Warhol's pictures - not unlike his statements - reproduce the effect of air escaping from a punctured balloon. They look bright, sunny, effervescent. But the fun leeches out of them the longer you look, and they take on a frozen, haunted aspect. The upshot is the same whether the subject is an electric chair or a New York socialite, a race riot or a Republican politician. It can make for a depressing viewing experience, but it is the true source of Warhol's profundity as a late 20th-century artist.

Mary Jordan's documentary "Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis" is part unsparing explication of a life story, part love-stuck personification of Smith's working philosophy. Jordan seems to get that the only way to approach Smith, to convey his unmitigated avant-gardism to a civilized audience is, in a sense, to become him. The soundtrack is alive with his recorded musings and disembodied audio rants (his breakup letter to mom would make Lillian Hellman blush). The screen is gloriously awash in snippets and condensed interludes from his films and...