Factory Girl and Pop Art

The Beatnik/Pop Art era of the 50s and 60s in New York City was the precursor to the Counter Culture movement of the late 60s and early 70s. Emerging as it did out of a culturally repressive moment in time, that era saw an explosion of innovative ideas in art, poetry, music, politics, lifestyles, and popular philosophy. Last night I saw Director George Hickenlooper's version of a corner of that historical moment focused around Edie Sedgwick's life and Andy Warhol's art Factory. The movie is ironically titled "Factory Girl", as Edie was from a wealthy family and also a very visible Warhol Factory personage. That moment also appears to be particularly linked to the growth of America's addiction to celebrity. Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans and Brillo Boxes telescoped the new world of "pop convenience products". His silk screens of superstars like Marilyn Monroe changed their images from "real life" to emboldenly colored ghost images . . . something super celebrity status itself seems to do in our society. Warhol's art depicts a world that is all shiny surface and no depth, and in "Factory Girl", he seems to do that with humans. Edie is his first success. There was, however, another corner of pop art created by artists like Peter Max. Where Warhol presents a vacuous world (whether by critical intention or because that's all he could feel . . .I can never decide), Max's world has the same ecstatic colors, but is imbued with optimistic joy for life, an exuberance for which Warhol would never think of aiming. Sedgwick, brilliantly portrayed by Sienna Miller, had a sad, lost life. Drugs played a huge part, as did her dysfunctional family. Warhol, chillingly played by Guy Pearce, takes a lot of heat for her plight in this film, but really, the whole Factory crowd comes off as both glamorously narcissisitic and emotionally vacant (shutdown). It is that aspect of that scene which interests me the most.

My First President

Because what we now celebrate as all Presidents' Day on a welcomed 3-day weekend was once the celebration of Presidents Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, many do not ponder beyond those two fine examples of Presidential prestige. For me, however, the "first" president was John F. Kennedy. Probably because I was just entering my teens and opening my awareness to a larger world when he and the peerless Jackie strolled into my young field of vision in that delightful new window on the world, television. Here was a Presidential icon I could hang on my wall. One with the charisma of a Washington or a Lincoln. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." He embodied every image of good government I was sold in Civics class. And then, in the time it took to pull a trigger, he was gone. It was a shock felt around the world, including my small hometown in Arkansas. This stunning picture by Life photojournalist Carl Mydans, really captures that surreal day, November 22, 1963. All I could do was read the newspaper and stare into the continuous broadcasting of grief as I shared in the national shock and suffered my first participation in collective experience as mediated by that strange, hypnotic screen.