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Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s

Andy Warhol is usually remembered as the artist who said that he wanted to be a machine, and that no one need ever look further than the surface when evaluating him or his art. Arguing against this carefully crafted pop image, Reva Wolf shows that Warhol was in fact deeply emotionally engaged with the people around him and that this was reflected in his art.

Wolf investigates the underground culture of poets, artists, and filmmakers who interacted with Warhol regularly. She claims that Warhol understood the literary imagination of his generation and that recognizing Warhol’s literary activities is essential to understanding his art. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material, including interviews, personal and public archives, tape recordings, documentary photographs, and works of art, Wolf offers dramatic evidence that Warhol’s interactions with writers functioned like an extended conversation and details how this process impacted his work. This highly original and fascinating study gives us fresh insight into Warhol’s art as practice and reformulates the myth that surrounds this popular American artist.

226 pages | 4 color plates, 80 halftones | 6-1/2 x 9-3/8 | © 1997

Art: American Art

Gay and Lesbian Studies

Literature and Literary Criticism: American and Canadian Literature

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: Portraiture, Poetry, and Gossip
2: Andy Warhol at the Crossroads of Poetry and Visual Art: The Mimeograph Revolution
3: Expanding Worlds: Poetry Off the Page
4: Artistic Appropriation and the Image of the Poet as Thief
5: The "Flower Thief": The "Film Poem," Warhol’s Early Films, and the Beat Writers
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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