Broken Goddess

I rarely wax dictatorial, but today if you're able, I'd like to recommend you do a good turn for a great lady.

Birthday Boy: Beautiful Stranger

It can, on an abstract level, be a blessing when the beautiful die young.

Another Fifteen Minutes for the Vagabond Lover

Have a spare couple million?  If so, as has been widely reported this morning, this charming sketch could be yours.

Birthday Girl: American Beauty Nose

The Greatest Star, en style (faux) Warhol

Half a century on from what is to me still her most beguiling era - when she was the kooky fresh discovery with what seemed like a trick voice - today Miss Barbra Streisand turns a somehow unlikely 71.  She is what she is, much loved and much disliked.  As for me, I think she's swell.  How many people could sing "I'm the Greatest Star," confident in the knowledge you'll believe it?

George McGovern, RIP

The 1972 presidential election is the first I remember clearly, although I do have one flash of '68, when I was pushed forward from a crowd out at our little city's "international" (a couple of flights a week to Toronto) airport to shake hands with the gentleman above.  Father Muscato was a bigwig Republican, and I suppose I was a good photo op, me in my little sailor suit.  I only wish I had the photo, even though I don't suppose Pat was there, in her good Republican cloth coat and Librium daze.

By '72, even the parents' support for Nixon had frayed, and I've long suspected that it was that year that my mother first voted Democratic (she didn't admit it until '84, precipitating a crisis chez nous that didn't fully heal until '92, when even Father Muscato finally, grudgingly switched sides).  I'm quite sure that this remarkable promotional piece had little influence on her (we were definitely more in the Rockwell than the Warhol camp in those days), but isn't it a marvelous little bit of surreality?  I'm trying to imagine a parallel today, and the closest I can think of is an Obama poster by Jeff Koons, but even that wouldn't be nearly as out of left field as the idea of Andy Warhol getting political, or even knowing what politics is.

But it was clearly the season for things coming out of left field, not least the candidate himself.  It's telling that even here, it's George McGovern's opponent who features, for McGovern was always as much about his issues and his ideas as his own public persona.  He was an enormously polarizing figure, not so much for his own, essentially irreproachable self (World War II pilot, dutiful public servant, thoughtful, sobersided...) as for the uncomfortable truths he put in front of the public:  the war in Vietnam was unwinnable and wrong; the militarization of America was unsustainable; there had to be a solution to the gnawing growth of poverty.  The wide margin by which he lost - even against the president who within two years would be forced from office, in part as a result of election-related dirty tricks directed against the McGovern campaign - meant that never again (so far, at least) would an outright progressive be a serious American presidential candidate (today's liberals look an awful lot like Eisenhower Republicans, and our current "socialist" president is at best a centrist next to '70s Democrats).

McGovern is best remembered for one loss.  But his life, when you look at the 90-year sweep of it, is anything but a loser's game.  He served his country and lived the ideals he believed in, fighting hunger and opposing war until the end.  He was a far from perfect person who never pretended anything else, and in the maelstrom of American political life, that in itself is something to admire.  His long journey is over, and we are the poorer for his death.  How many people said the same for Warhol's unappealing subject?

Who, by the way, had a clammy handshake and breath bad enough to shake the composure of even a five-year-old.  Were that photo to survive, I have a feeling it would not be flattering to either of us.

Lillibet Superstar

I have found myself entranced by the news out of London, both amusing and bemusing, that the Queen has taken a stab at broadening the Royal Collections a tad - by purchasing a set of four Warhol screenprints of her own august person. 

While their first stop as royal possessions will be a Jubilee portrait show at Windsor, once that's done, I like to think they'll go a long way to brighten up a room at Buck House.  One imagines herself in her cosy armchair of a quiet evening, the DoE dozing on the sofa; glancing up from her Racing Post she pauses for a moment to admire them, hung among the Winterhalters and Laszlos and Beatons of her nearest and dearest.  "One really was," she thinks to herself, "a pretty nice girl..."

File Under "Lightning, Not Striking Twice"

Oh, Andy tried and tried - but nothing in heaven or on earth was going to turn Cornelia Guest into Edie 2.0.  That dress didn't help.

Blond on Blonde

Mr. Warhol presents his portrait of Barbara Millicent Roberts. Should I be embarrassed that I know that the subject is depicted in her Superstar Barbie incarnation? It's a look that's half '80s trophy wife, half JonBenet, but Andy makes it work...

Auto-Doppelgängers

Sometimes people look so much like themselves that they look more like imitations of themselves. I like that. And clearly, a little something to take the edge off never hurts...

Urban Cowgirl

Dolly by Andy. You have to hand it to her; she holds her own against his pitiless gaze better than most. And the look, of its era, is flawless.

Sly Fox

Herewith, another attempt, in the person of no less than Sylvester Stallone, to go beyond our usual diet of Subcontinental Cuties - and this one's art - a gen-u-ine Warhol.

Say what you will about the man's thespic gifts, choices of material, or refusal, of late, to age gracefully (or even particularly interestingly disgracefully, which we fully support) - he no question had a certain sleepy-eyed something...

Playing the Palace

Liza by Warhol: Think Pink!

When, as from time to time happens, I decide that the single biggest mistake of my adult life was leaving New York City, it's usually a phrase like this that's the catalyst: "Liza's playing the Palace!"

And she is. And here I sit on the other side of the world; granted, we have a real Palace hereabouts (several, in fact), but it's hardly the same thing.

The reviews mostly aren't in yet, but early signs are good ("Liza Minnelli reigns in opening at The Palace Theatre" - Newsday). I'm not an absolutely rabid Liza queen, but these days, her kind of razzle-dazzle is in sadly short supply, and if nothing else she's an incredible link to a show-biz tradition that stretches back, when you think about it, a century or more.

New York has a terrific profile in honor of the new show, and soon enough shaky YouTube videos will be helping bridge the gap between here and there, so I really can't complain about a Liza-drought.

And of course, I have to think of all the things that wouldn't have happened had I stayed ensconced in my little West Side flat - Mr. Muscato chief among them. Thanks to Liza, I do know that Life is a Cabaret, but thanks to him, I'm equally aware that there's not a thing in the world wrong with knitting, a book and a broom (with the right guy around to hold your wool), and that, for the moment, at least, I'm not going like Elsie.

And neither, it would appear, is Liza. Three cheers for that!

Picture This: Curiouser and Curiouser

Well, there's nothing I enjoy more than a good false-identity scandal.

The last few years have certainly been rich with them - flat out crazies like Lauren Stratford, lost souls like Binyamin Wilkomirski (those two separate sagas actually intersected at one point), literary notorieties Messrs. Frey, LeRoy (or is that Miss?), and Nasdijj, you name it.

Now, it seems, the art world has its own mystery: the life (if there was one) and (putative) career of an artist named Pietro Psaier. According to a British auctioneer (and almost no one else), he was something of a Zelig-as-Painter, starting with a supposedly close association with Andy Warhol.

This distinctly unconvincing image, though, is pretty much the only evidence offered up to date, with every other lead turning up dead, every supposed associate off the scene or quite willing to say they've never heard of Psaier or seen his work, and generally not a whole lot that one can place any trust in to confirm that the artist even existed, let alone basked in the charmed/toxic air of the legendary Factory.

From there, at various times, it's been bruited about that he worked with Basquiat, been a leading rock-poster designer, been New York's "artist of the year", been the last artist to sketch the dying Francis Bacon - and finally was washed away in the Tsunami of 2004. It sounds like quite a time - almost too good to be true. And likely is.

The art? While it has a certain Pop charm, it isn't exactly what one would call original.

But it's awfully decorative; really the kind of thing that people like in their living rooms. As one dealer has said, "My clients want something more modern these days. An Andy Warhol costs millions; these are just a couple of thousand. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if they were by Fred Bloggs."

Which may be just as well. I have a feeling that the poor souls who have, supposedly, been paying upwards of £14,000 for some of Psaier's works may well have ended up with, more or less, an original Fred Bloggs and not much more.