A day of three halves — An Elegant Sufficiency

Today was going to be filled with culture, with a capital C!

We were over the river and outside the Warhol gallery shortly after it opened.

And of course, we followed the recommendation to begin on floor 7 and work our way down. The gallery was laid out in chronological order and told the story of the artist’s life. Having read of his childhood and early years in Pittsburgh, we followed him to New York and continued with the fashion illustration, noting the observational skills and fine drawing.

I appreciated the video presentation explaining his blotted line technique of drawing, especially as there were several examples of this in finished works.

We went on to the early soup can work, the painted images, created in multiples

which were then stencilled and later, printed.

The development of his artwork was told as a clear narrative, complete with examples. But it was only here when I began to realise how few actual pieces of Warhol’s work hung on the walls. Sure, there were key pieces from each stage of his life and career, but when it came to actual screenprints, there were some significant pieces missing.

So, although there was a room of these double screenprints, worked from Polaroid images, complete with the original Polaroids too, the most familiar faces were not there. No Marilyn, no Mohammed Ali, no Mao for example, Of course, these are all in private collections or in galleries around the world - we’ve seen them - and in this instance, it didn’t matter one bit. We were happy with Mick, with Sylvester Stallone and with Jackie Kennedy!

The room explaining the development of the fruit project was fascinating, too.

The whole of the third floor was given over to his collections. I had learned from the exhibition we’d seen in Hong Kong, that Warhol was a great collector of everything. Indeed, on the wall of this room was a claim that this could possibly be one of the last extensive non-digital collections of all. A few pieces had been selected for display - some letters, a couple of diaries (entitled “night books”) and other bits and pieces which seemed random but which were surely of some great significance.

The second floor contained his last works themed on the influence the catholic church had had on his art. Strong women featured - his mother, for example - and some parts of his earlier story fell into place as we read.

The final room contained his last piece of work - appropriately, one of several iterations of his interpretation of The Last Supper.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed and decidedly awestruck, we returned to the car, only then realising the the car park attendant was sitting in a Warhol exhibit! Art is whatever you can get away with, eh?

Next stop on our cultural journey was to be The Mattress Factory, though as we drove past Randyland for one (very) fleeting moment, I wondered if we might make a short stop there too?

Perhaps it’s as well that we didn’t, with hindsight. It could just have been the straw that broke the camel’s back!

The key to the Mattress Factory, we learned, was the concept of the installation. To be precise, the “site specific installation”.

The first one was out the back, down the street and along to a three story house, where the door was open and a young man was sitting at the desk. All we knew was that this exhibit was called “A second home”.

As soon as we stepped through the door into the house itself, we were in another world - one on a different scale, of strange proportions and containing weird and wonderful assemblages of all kinds of (mostly recycled) things.

It went on, through several rooms, up a step here, around a corner there…it was above and below at the same time, and in every space imaginable.

There were three floors to walk through, too - the whole of this terraced house - and all the time there was a weird soundtrack of some ghostly plink plunky piano playing. Oh, and did I mention that the lighting was a little strange too?

I found it creepy, compelling, curious and absolutely fascinating all at the same time and though I couldn’t bear to leave, I didn’t want to stay, either.

Amazing. You can read more about it here

The next building was around the corner and down the next street.

Feeling slightly high from our experience so far, it would be fair to say we found the next work to be underwhelming. Clever, yes. The imaginative extra-terrestrial landscape had been created for stop-motion animation and this was being live streamed by means of solar power from panels in the window. It seemed a little Clanger-ish - though perhaps that was unfair - but we both felt it lacked some sophistication somewhere along the way. (Yet, weren’t the Clangers considered to be highly original and somewhat sophisticated for their time?)

Whether or not we’d seen the best first, or perhaps it was simply our mood, but the remainder of the exhibits in the Mattress Factory failed to captivate our attention in quite the same way as A Second Home.

There was, however, one piece of work which I admired and found fascinating. At first, I questioned its inclusion amongst these site-specific works but on thinking about it, I’m not sure it would be possible to move it or indeed, preserve it beyond its life here at the Mattress Factory. It’s by Naomi Draper, is called Holding Fragments and I believe it measures 14m long. Most crucially, it’s completely made of pressed flowers.

Though I admired the length of the “fabric” and the roll of which stood in the corner, the detail I liked most was this…

The shadow.

We looked around the rest of the Mattress Factory, finding some pieces to be discomforting and dark in terms of content and actual physical state. I opted out of the last room having seen that it was totally in darkness but my Hero was curious. He wasn’t curious enough at this stage, however, to sit in the blackout and wait fifteen minutes for something to happen.

We were so glad we had visited, wouldn’t have missed the Second Home for anything (or, for that matter, Naomi Draper’s work) but I was really pleased we’d not tried to include Randyland in our day as well, for I fear that might have tipped us over the edge!

So, we drove back into town through the Mexican War Streets

We parked the car back at the hotel and walked a few blocks to the City and County Building, site of the city’s Christmas tree and also of a small competition I’d read about.

Former Mayor of the city, Richard Caliguiri stands on the steps by the Christmas tree, represented in a rather kindly sculpture, I thought.

We went inside and through security to view the third cultural exhibit of the day: the Annual Gingerbread House competition!

There were some stunners and true to form, we didn’t always agree with the judges!

There were heaps of entries, from big and small, young and old. Some groups had entered: school classes, girl guide troops and families too. The best were imaginative and had created a secure construction, neatly finished.

The main thing was that so many - hundreds - had taken part and the spirit of participation was abundant.

So, I’m not quite sure if the almost perfect replica - 100% edible, it claimed - of the building created by a professional baker was intended to inspire or to say “yah boo! See what I can do!!” to all the lovely people who entered!