Tag Archives: Judy Garland

WARHOL WOMEN AT LÉVY GORVY

Forty-two paintings of women by Andy Warhol—including portraits of Gertrude Stein, Ethel Scull, Liza Minnelli, Dolly Parton, Golda Meir, Debbie Harry, Marilyn Monroe, and the artist’s mother Julia Warhola—are now on view at Lévy Gorvy in Manhattan.

In a silver-tin-foil-covered room in the gallery, a selection of Warhol’s 1964–1966 Screen Test shorts will play on a loop. Among the artist’s subjects for these 3-minute films were Yoko Ono, Edie Sedgwick, Marisa Berenson, Barbara Rubin, Amy Taubin, Susan Sontag, Niki de Saint Phalle, Cass Elliott, Donyale Luna, Holly Solomon, Maureen Tucker, and Nico.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a collector today who is in between, let’s say, 25 to 65 [years old] who will tell me, ‘I won’t collect Warhol,’ and I don’t know that about any other artist… Our great-grandchildren will still be collecting Warhol more than many of the artists that are more pricey today.” — Dominique Lévy

WARHOL WOMEN

Through June 15.

Lévy Gorvy

909 Madison Avenue (at 73rd Street), New York City.

Andy Warhol, from top: Judy Garland (Multicolor), 1978, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas; Wilhelmina Ross, from the series Ladies and Gentlemen, circa 1974–1975; Triple Mona Lisa, 1964, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas; Kimiko Powers, 1972, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas; Aretha Franklin, 1986, synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas; Red Jackie, 1964, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, photograph courtesy Froehlich Collection, Stuttgart. Images © 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Paintings photographed by Tim Nighswander, courtesy Lévy Gorvy.

RAINBOW’S END

A STAR IS BORN (1954, directed by George Cukor)—a trenchant film noir, a Technicolor/CinemaScope extravaganza, and Judy Garland’s last great musical—is a Hollywood story that Hollywood has told many times: a great but aging male star on his way down meets a green-but-talented actress (or singer) who becomes his protégé, and whose fame soon surpasses his.*

Despite the energy and brilliance of her performance, by the mid-1950s Garland was on a steep downward slide herself. Three years before A STAR IS BORN went into production at Warner Bros., she was fired for general unreliability by the studio (MGM) that was instrumental in creating and encouraging her prescription-drug habit. In 1969, Garland was found dead in a London flat, age 47.

A STAR IS BORN

Tuesday, August 29, at 1 pm.

Bing Theater, LACMA

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

* See What Price Hollywood? (1932, directed by George Cukor) for the first version.

From top: Judy Garland singing “The Man That Got Away” in A Star is BornGavin Lambert’s On Cukor, with a cover photograph of Cukor directing Garland in A Star is BornFrank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Lauren Bacall at the Pantages Theater premiere of A Star is Born, Hollywood, September 29, 1954.