I Want To Be Rich When I Am Dead

I admire the way dead celebrities continue to make more money than ever. Elvis Presley was one of the highest paid entertainers of 2010, & he has been gone for 24 years, yet he made $60 million last year.

Andy Warhol knew that he would one day be the stuff of legend. Warhol: “Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”

Last week, another dead celebrity was the toast of NYC. At Phillips de Pury & Company, Elizabeth Taylor stole the show. The 1963 painting, one of 13 made of Elizabeth Taylor in various colors, was titled-Liz #5 (Early Colored Liz), & it sold to the bidder for $24 million, or $26.9 million including Phillips fees.

The price was not far off the $23.5 million that the actor Hugh Grant got for his turquoise Liz at Christie’s in 2007.

How much can I get for my old jockstrap?

International Understanding

I guess because we feel the need to be engaged in 3 wars, I have been attempting to gain a simple working knowledge about what is happening in the Middle East & North Africa. It is so complicated with such a complex history: colonialism, East VS West, religious fundamentalism, oil, interesting fashion choices. I get most of my material from the Internet. Sometimes it is the magic of music that can bring people to understand each other. This video reached out to me from a contrary culture & spoke to me like no news pundit could:

Born On This Day- September 15th... Pioneer Gay Photographer- Wilhelm von Gloeden

Von Gloeden in self portraits

Before George Platt Lynes, Horst, Bruce Webber, or Richard Avedon, there was Wilhelm von Gloeden. Famous in his own day, his work was mostly forgotten for close to a century, only to rediscovered in recent times as the most important gay visual artist of the pre–WW I era.


 Because of ill health, von Gloeden left his native Germany in 1877, moving to Taormina in Sicily, where he remained until his death in 1931. The mayor of Taormina was the German landscape painter Otto Geleng, who had moved there in 1863. Through him von Gloeden soon became acquainted with the locals. He set up his photographic studio in Taormina, & was exhibiting his work internationally by1890.

Today von Gloeden is mainly known for his male nudes, but in his time he was also famous for his landscape photography that helped popularize tourism to Italy. He took over 7000 images, which after his death were left to one of his models- Pancrazio Buciunì, von Gloeden's lover from the age of 15. In 1933 some 1000 glass negatives from von Gloeden's collection & 2000 prints were confiscated by Mussolini's Fascist police under the allegation that they were pornography & destroyed; another 1000 negatives were destroyed in 1936, although Buciuni was tried & cleared of possessing pornographic images. Most of the surviving pictures are now in the Fratelli Alinari photographic archive in Florence.

 The images that survive are startling for their technical accomplishment: his controlled use of lighting & elegant, classical poses of his models, innovative use of filters & special body makeup to disguise skin blemishes contribute to the artistic perfection of his works, & to their sexual heat. They became popular as postcards in Europe & the USA, often “under the counter”. Von Gloeden was wealthy & shared his profits with his models & funded small businesses in the area, which critics say may explain why the locals tolerated his homosexuality & the increasing tourist trade interested in the young dark skinned young men.

I see connection between the centuries from Von Gloeden to Warhol.

I was familiar with this image for years without knowing about the man responsible.

Words To Live By

"Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches."

Andy Warhol

David Bowie is Andy Warhol in the 1996 Julian Schnabel & Jeffrey Wright film "Basquiat"

"I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done."

Lucille Ball

Born On This Day- August 6th... Andy Warhol

I remember quite well, my parents shaking their heads & saying- " that is not art... it is a painting of a soup can!", when I expressed my appreciation for the work of Andy Warhol at a very young age. The point of the matter was, I "got him", even at age 8... or especially at age 8. Andy Warhol was the subject of much scorn & derision from the critics, the public & my parents, but he was arguably the most important artist of the 20th century.


Andrew Warhola, sometimes referred to as the "Pope of Pop," embraced pop art, fascinated with the commercialism of popular icons in media & in everyday life. Warhol helped to shape pop culture & foresaw our fascination with the media to the extreme extent to which it is now accessible. Claiming that each individual would have his or her "15 minutes of fame," Warhol would certainly not be surprised by the popularity of such venues as YouTube, MP3 music downloads, MYSpace, American Idol, Facebook, The Real Housewives, or blogs.

A master & practitioner of multiple creative forms of expression, Warhol was a painter, writer, music producer, avant-garde filmmaker, magazine creator, sculptor, & photographer. Focusing on diverse & contrasting interests at once, he was fascinated with all forms of media, a blurring of gender identities, & the contrast between a sense of celebrity & privacy.

He was a ground breaker in the idea of self as product. He even set up his studio as "The Factory", overseeing a staff that turned out prints, silkscreens & products of his work. He was still a great artist & craftsman. The Husband & I once saw an enchanting exhibit of his commercial drawings, mostly of ladies shoes, produced for advertising. These works predated his huge fame, but the essence of what he was to bring was already there. I have allot of material about him, including the very readable Andy Warhol's Diaries. He remains my favorite artist.

"An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have."