Not P, Warhol

[Mark Kohut]

Speaking of Warhol, thanks David, whose birth family and mine were
parishioners of the same Church in Pittsburgh. (If you go to the Andy Warhol
Museum and look at Andy's grave webcam, where flowers and soup cans are
placed on his stone and plot, average size,
you will see in the upper left a gravestone that reads KOHUT. Yeahp, you
can visit me there with my parents for all eternity soon enough
after paying homage to Andy.)

Gopnik's Warhol will be, after reading only a little, one of the great
biographies. Because it is so wonderfully detailed, so wonderfully
knowledgeable--he tackles all of the superficial--but many true since Andy
is all human surface---ways of "explaining' Andy's work thru his life.

I'll give two. He has found out that when his dad bought a new house when
he was still a kid from a relative he paid cash--about 3 Grand if i
remember, which took years
of frugal non-drinking hard work, and which included Andy's mother selling
vegetables and homemade things--but the the sale was recorded as for $1..
Tax avoidance which Andy later also worked hard at......(I actually saw an
example of this when I went one Friday evening to the Warhol Museum
for a Reveal, first time ever, opening of one of Andy's time
capsules...Andy used to periodically sweep everything in his studio into
big boxes and
date and seal and store them......This evening I saw IRS letters, receipts,
maybe even a marked-up receipt, requests for others to send him letters re
his expenses, etc. )

And, Andy, whom I knew since his later art school years was seen as the one
with the most natural draughtsman's talent any had ever seen, the one who
entered art
school with little to really learn and all his teachers saw it, was "the
one we asked to help draw something when we hung stuff in the classroom"
said HIS SECOND GRADE TEACHER!, whom Gopnik found and interviewed.

Perfect circles by hand at will from the youngest age. As if hand-eye
coordination was a tautology,  Sometime look up his pen and ink drawings of
street life on the South Side of Pittsburgh, famers selling vegetables via
trucks, etc.

And there's more.



On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 8:58 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Years ago I got about halfway thru The Recognitions.  It lost me in its
> depiction of its Pynchon-like whole sick crew. As such, I never dove deep
> into its questions about original Vs copied artwork.  Am I wrong to suspect
> Warhol was his target?
>
> David Morris
>
> On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 6:32 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> https://twitter.com/sarahw/status/1256726554748628992?s=20
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>