info@rusynacademy.sk

home

This column is prepared in cooperation with the Museology-Educational Experimental Centre of the Andy Warhol Association in Medzilaborce.

http://www.andywarhol.sk, bycko@centrum.sk

John Warhola is dead

Andy Warhol + Dano Brogyányi

The writer Michal Šmajda enters the encyclopaedia of personalities “WHO’S WHO”

Six of Warhol’s paintings sold for 31.199.000 USD in an auction

Andy Warhol in Slovakia

More Than 15 Minutes

A man from nowhere

GREEN CAR CRASH

In the last year, the value of Andy Warhol´s works has increased by 50 - 200%

I. Gašparovič is the first president to visit an exhibition opening of A. Warhol’s works

ANDY WARHOL - LIFE AND ART WORK

Andy Warhol - DEATH AND LIFE

Andy Warhol

“15 YEARS OF FAME“

Warholovce

Warhol is better known in Serbia than in our country

For sale Artist Andy Warhol Title Marilyn Monroe (FS-II.25) Medium Screenprint on white paper. Year 1967 Size 36" x 36" Edition Edition of 250, signed in pencil and numbered with rubber stamp on verso; some signed in ball-point pen;some only initialled on verso; some dated. There are 26 AP, signed and lettered A-Z on verso. Misc. Portfolio of 10 screenprints. Printer: Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc./Du-Art Displays,New York Publisher: Factory Additions, New York PRICE : 195.000,- USD   Artist Andy Warhol Title Marilyn Monroe (FS-II.27) Medium Screenprint on white paper. Year 1967 Size 36" x 36" Edition Edition of 250, signed in pencil and numbered with rubber stamp on verso; some signed in ball-point pen;some only initialled on verso; some dated. There are 26 AP, signed and lettered A-Z on verso. Misc. Portfolio of 10 screenprints. Printer: Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc./Du-Art Displays,New York Publisher: Factory Additions, New York PRICE : 200.000,- USD   Artist Andy Warhol Title Marilyn Monroe (FS-II.28) Medium Screenprint on white paper. Year 1967 Size 36" x 36" Edition Edition of 250, signed in pencil and numbered with rubber stamp on verso; some signed in ball-point pen;some only initialled on verso; some dated. There are 26 AP, signed and lettered A-Z on verso. Misc. Portfolio of 10 screenprints. Printer: Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc./Du-Art Displays,New York Publisher: Factory Additions, New York PRICE : 195.000,- USD   Artist Andy Warhol Title Marilyn Monroe (FS-II.39) Medium Screenprint on white paper. Year 1967 Size 36" x 36" Edition Edition of 250, signed in pencil and numbered with rubber stamp on verso; some signed in ball-point pen;some only initialled on verso; some dated. There are 26 AP, signed and lettered A-Z on verso. Misc. Portfolio of 10 screenprints. Printer: Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc./Du-Art Displays,New York Publisher: Factory Additions, New York PRICE : 200.000,- USD   Artist Andy Warhol Title Marilyn Monroe (FS-II.30) Medium Screenprint on white paper. Year 1967 Size 36" x 36" Edition Edition of 250, signed in pencil and numbered with rubber stamp on verso; some signed in ball-point pen;some only initialled on verso; some dated. There are 26 AP, signed and lettered A-Z on verso. Misc. Portfolio of 10 screenprints. Printer: Aetna Silkscreen Products, Inc./Du-Art Displays,New York Publisher: Factory Additions, New York PRICE : 195.000,- USD   Artist Andy Warhol Title Lenin Medium Screenprint on Arches 88 paper. Year 1987 Size 39.375" x 29.5" Edition Edition of 120 ( 19/120 ), 24 AP, 6 PP, 10 HC, signed and numbered in pencil lower left. There are 46 TP signed and numbered in pencil as noted above. Misc. Printer: Rupert Jasen Smith, New York Publisher: Galerie Bernd Klüser, Munich, Germany PRICE : 110.000,- USD

Andy Warhol + Dano Brogyányi USA + SK FUJIFILM galéria/FUJIFILM gallery Vernisáž: 2. 7. 2008, 18.30/ exhibition opening: the July 2nd, 2008 at 6.30 p.m. Diela zapožičané zo zbierok Warhol Partners Gallery, člena Spoločnosti Andyho Warhola v Medzilaborciach, Slovenská republika / Courtesy of the Warhols Partners Gallery, member of the Andy Warhol Society in Medzilaborce, Slovak republic Kurátori: Dr. Michal Bycko, PhD., Mgr. Martin Cubjak / Curators: Dr. Michal Bycko, PhD., Mgr. Martin Cubjak Organizuje FOTOFO / Organised by FOTOFO Adresa / Address: Prepoštská 4, Bratislavawww.sedf.sk otvorené denne okrem pondelka 13.00 – 18.00 / open daily from tuesday to sunday 1 p.m. – 6 p.m.   At the time when in the USA the Abstract Expessionism was on its decay as well as the idea of an artist being the highest shaman and a great intelectual, a new „hunger“ for a light, cheap, sweat... consume and art perception arouse in the fed up American society. A new space was created to be filled in by artists working at the beginning of the 60’s and 70’s in Europe and the USA with a big „ART“ and even a bigger „POP“. In the foreground, there stood a simple manipulation with those who were literally asking for it. In the foreground, there stood artists demonstrating such a manipulation to people by means of art. In the foreground, there stood artists which joined a movement called pop-art by their personal artistic projects. Andy Warhol became soon a personality of the biggest artistic profile in Pop Art. His heritage has prepared a ground for a creative ambition of artists overstapping not only his message, but also his huge creative potention in multimedia. Daniel Brogyányi follows this heritage probably the most obvious and intensive way in Slovakia. He is an artist on the border between the seriousness of expression and the banality of topic. His overstapping of Warhol’s pop-art idea to impose a seriousness and dignity in banality makes it the most evident. Instead, Brogyányi inserts banality and morbidity into seriousness within Post Pop Art. While the portraits by Andy Warhol capture famous personalities in different edition and colour variation, the portraits by Daniel Brogyányi capture famous personalities in regard to an ironic depiction of his-her character (Peter Lipa (in English the last name can be transalted as lime tree) portrayed with a lime flower atc.). Of course, overstapping a simple artistic heritage by editing or reinterpretation in the form of portrait is not new. However, by Brogyányi there is a novelty in the pureview of searching for new parallels and similarities; the pureview of searching for a percipient which looks for and brings in that necessary and essential moment of a permanent non transparency and the creative aspect of being unfinished in art. His destructive treatment of flora and faun through means of computer is also interesting. He does not describe or interpret; he shows us these objects in circumstances suggesting entirely new or scarce conotations. Mgr. Martin Cubjak curator MMUAW

ANDY WARHOL

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in a two-room shack-like apartment at 73 Orr Street in the working class neighborhood of Soho in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Andrej Warhola and Julia Zavacky Warhola. The youngest of three sons, Andrew attended Holmes Elementary School and Schenley High School, and entered Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh in 1945, where he studied with Balcomb Greene, Robert Lepper, Samuel Rosenberg, and others. He experimented with his name, signing holiday cards "André," and dropping the final "a" from his family name. He graduated in June 1949 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Pictorial Design.

Soon after graduating, Warhol moved to New York City to pursue a career as a commercial artist. His first work appeared in Glamour magazine in September 1949. Throughout the 1950s, he became one of the most successful illustrators of his time, and won numerous awards for his work from the Art Directors Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. His clients included Tiffany & Co., The New York Times, I. Miller Shoes, Bonwit Teller, Columbia Records, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Fleming-Joffe, NBC, and others. Much of his commercial work was based on photographs and other source images, a process he would use for the rest of his life. He also employed the delightfully quirky handwriting of his mother Julia in many of his works in this period. She won a professional award for her lettering on the LP The Story of Moondog in 1958, and Warhol published a book of her drawings, Holy Cats, in 1957. She was always credited as "Andy Warhol's Mother." She left Pittsburgh in 1952 to join her son, and they lived together until about 1971. Warhol painted memorial portraits of her after her death; he also had made a film and shot videotapes of her.

In 1956 Warhol traveled around the world for several weeks, visiting many countries in Asia and Europe. In the late 1950s he began to devote more energy to painting. He made his first Pop paintings, based on comics and ads, in 1961, and then a series of Campbell's Soup Cans in 1962. These created a sensation in the art world and launched Warhol as a celebrity. Except for a brief period in the mid-1960s, he would continue to paint until the end of his life. He also extended his talents into other fields such as film, publishing, writing, television, and music. By the time of his death, he was one of the most prolific and well-known artists the world had ever seen.

Warhol had a life-long fascination with Hollywood. In 1962 he began a large series of celebrity portraits, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor. He also began his series of "death and disaster" paintings at this time - images of electric chairs, suicides, and car crashes.

In 1963 he began to make films, and created many classics of avant-garde cinema over a five-year period, including Sleep (1963), Empire (1963), Kiss (1963-64), and The Chelsea Girls (1966). Warhol made about 600 films from 1963 until 1976, ranging from almost 500 short Screen Tests (4-minute portrait films, from 1963-1966), to **** (a/k/a Four Stars, 1967-68), a twenty-five-hour long film. Between 1968 and 1976, Paul Morrissey directed most of his films, while Warhol was the producer.

Warhol's first exhibition of sculptures was held in 1964, with hundreds of replicas of large supermarket product boxes, including Brillo Boxes, Heinz Boxes, Del Monte Boxes, Mott's Boxes, and Kellogg's Boxes. By this time, his new studio, painted silver and known as the Factory, was becoming the place to be in New York; parties held there were mentioned in gossip columns throughout the country. By the mid-1960s he was a frequent presence in magazines such as Newsweek, Time, and Esquire.

In 1965, Warhol was the first artist to exhibit video as art. He loved its immediacy, and eventually filled about 2500 videotapes, including Factory Diaries, Phoney, and others.

At an exhibition of his Flowers paintings in Paris in 1965, Warhol publicly announced that he was retiring from painting to pursue filmmaking, although he continued to make editions of fine art prints, and also sculptures. However, he began painting again in 1966. He broadened his activities into the realm of performance art with a traveling multimedia show called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which featured the rock and roll band The Velvet Underground. The EPI has been credited by some with the invention of the psychedelic light show as nightclub entertainment. The Velvet Underground went on to become one of the most influential rock bands in history. During this time, Warhol briefly operated a dance club in Manhattan called the Gymnasium, which featured exercise equipment on the dance floor.

In 1966 Warhol exhibited Cow Wallpaper and Silver Clouds at the Leo Castelli Gallery. The Cows were Day-Glo colored, and the Clouds were floating silvery balloons shaped like pillows. Warhol covered the exterior of Stockholm's Moderna Museet with Cow Wallpaper in 1968.

On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas, a writer who had appeared in Warhol's film I, a Man (1967), came into the studio and shot Warhol in the chest, apparently because of a play she had written. He recovered from the near-fatal shooting after a five-hour operation. While recuperating he painted a large series of portraits of Happy Rockefeller, the wife of the Governor of New York.

Warhol self-published a large series of artist's books in the 1950s, but his first mass-produced book, Andy Warhol's Index (Book), was published in 1967. He later published a, a novel (1968), Blue Movie (1970), THE Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) (1975), POPism (1980), Exposures (1979), Children's Book (1983), and America (1985). Party Book (1988), and The Diaries of Andy Warhol (1989) were published posthumously, with the latter becoming a scandalous best-seller. Beginning with a, the technique for most of his writings was transcribed recorded conversations. This method was also used for Warhol's stage play, Pork, produced in London and New York in 1971. In total, he recorded about 3400 audiotapes.

Warhol closed the 1960s with an unusual exhibition, Raid the Icebox I, which he was invited to choose from the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design's museum. Rather than the usual masterpieces, Warhol chose damaged paintings in the process of being repaired, the entire collection of historical footwear and parasols, and other unexpected items. At the time, he was developing a very keen eye for antiques; among his discoveries were French Art Deco designs, Native American blankets and pottery, and American Folk Art and cookie jars. Also in that year he co-founded Interview, a magazine devoted to film, fashion, and popular culture that continues to this day. Warhol's quote, "In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes," is known throughout the world, and originated in about 1967 or 1968. Interview testified to Warhol's lifelong obsession with film stars and other contemporary celebrities.

In 1971 Warhol co-designed the cover for The Rolling Stones' album Sticky Fingers, featuring a close-up photo of the torso of a man wearing blue jeans with a real working zipper. The design was nominated for a Grammy Award. He designed many music LP covers before, beginning in 1949, but in the 1970s he received many more commissions for these designs, which usually consisted of a painted portrait of the recording artist. His commissioned portrait paintings began in 1963, with portraits of the collector Ethel Scull, entertainer Bobby Short, and others.

Throughout the 1970s, Warhol frequently socialized with celebrities such as Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Truman Capote, both of whom had been important early subjects in his art. He started to receive dozens-and soon hundreds-of commissions for painted portraits from wealthy socialites, music and film stars, and other clients. He was a regular partygoer at Studio 54, the famous New York disco, along with celebrities such as fashion designer Halston, entertainer Liza Minnelli, and Bianca Jagger.

The 1970s was also a period of experimentation for Warhol. He made 3 versions of a sculpture called Rain Machine (Daisy Waterfall) for the Osaka World's Fair in 1970. These consist of a large shower of water in front of a wall of 3-D lenticular prints of daisies. In the mid-1970s he experimented with an idea for an Invisible Sculpture, made of motion detectors and loud sirens. In 1978, he produced a large series of works called Oxidation paintings, made with human urine on canvases covered with metallic paint. The chemical interaction produced beautiful abstract shapes, in contrast to their shocking medium. Warhol also worked on several ideas for television shows at this time, as well as art works in video, including Water and Fight.

In 1974, Warhol started a series of Time Capsules, cardboard boxes that he filled with the materials of his everyday life, including mail, photos, art, clothing, collectibles, etc. The Time Capsules eventually numbered over 600, and are now an archival goldmine of his life and times. From the 1970s onward, Warhol continued to produce a prolific number of paintings, prints, photographs, and drawings: Mao, Ladies and Gentlemen, Skulls, Hammer and Sickles, Shadows, Guns, Knives, Crosses, Dollar Signs, Zeitgeist, Camouflage, and many more, culminating in his series of Last Supper paintings, which were shown in Milan in early 1987. He returned to the idea of wallpaper as art, creating Mao (1974), Self-Portrait (1978), and Fish (1984) wallpapers. Fish was part of an environmental work, Paintings for Children, in which his small paintings of Toys were hung at a child's eyelevel on the wallpaper. His Sewn Photos (multiple prints of identical photos sewn together in a grid) were exhibited in New York in January 1987.

In the mid-1980s his television shows, Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes and Andy Warhol's TV, aired nationally on MTV and on Madison Square Garden cable television in New York. He created work for Saturday Night Live, and appeared in an episode of The Love Boat. He produced music videos for rock bands such as The Cars, and signed with the modeling agencies Ford and Zoli. He modeled in fashion shows, and in numerous print and television ads for Sony, TDK, Vidal Sassoon, and many other companies.

In 1984, Warhol collaborated with young artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring on artworks. Warhol returned to painting with a brush in these, briefly abandoning the silkscreen method he had used exclusively since 1962. Nearly all of Warhol's works in every medium were created with the help of friends (beginning with writer Ralph Ward, and the crowd at Serendipity 3 café in the 1950s), paid assistants (beginning with Vito Giallo and Nathan Gluck in the 1950s), and managers such as Fred Hughes. Of all of these, the best known are the Superstars - the "underground" actors of his films of the 1960s such as Taylor Mead, Baby Jane Holzer, Ingrid Superstar, Brigid Polk, Edie Sedgwick, Ondine, Viva, Joe Dallesandro, Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and many others.

Warhol died in New York City on February 22, 1987, due to complications following surgery to remove his gall bladder. In 1988, a ten-day auction of his enormous estate of art and antiques raised over 20 million dollars for The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The Andy Warhol Museum was announced in 1989, and opened in Pittsburgh in 1994.

-by Matt Wrbican, Archivist, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh

“15 YEARS OF FAME“

Mgr. Valika MAĎAROVÁ, director of the museum

Declaration:

“This is another moment to stop and remember the times when the idea of the museum establishment was born. Every thought is a seed of a deed and that is why the thought needs to be strengthened by will power, so that it became a clear idea and finally a deed.

The inner ambivalence of wanting and, at the same time, not wanting something is usually a serious obstacle when trying to achieve will power and life success.

The oft repeated and world-known phrase of Andy Warhol „I come from nowhere,“ is a reply to a question about his roots. Slovakia has been linked with the name of this genius in art for over fifteen years. Thanks to the fame of the artist, which has not fallen silent even after we have moved to the 21^st century, the world is also starting to be aware of Slovakia. This can be assumed from the attendance of tourists and admirers from various parts of the world. After all, it concerns an artist, the roots of who are definitely in Slovakia, and what is important, he opened a new point of view of the world as well as the way of understanding our, then, 20^th century.

Well, who would not like to be respected by those, whom he is in touch with? We all desire for our true value to be fully appreciated. We need to feel we are important in our small world. We do not want cheap compliments, insincere sweet talk, but we long for genuine appreciation. The lives of many people would probably have run quite different courses if someone showed them their importance.

The Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce deals with the roots, life and work of Andy Warhol, as they appear in the light of documented facts and not some conjecture. A visitor or an art critic can, of course, have various requirements. It depends what his taste tells him.

The museum continues in its acquisition work and even extends it to the forms of gifts and purchases. My genuine thanks go to the leadership of U.S. Steel Košice for their sponsorship gift of the  portfolio ”Ladies and Gentlemen“; to the former Prime Minister of Slovakia Mikuláš Dzurinda for providing the grant from the Government Office of the Slovak Republic in Bratislava for purchasing A. Warhol´s work „Kimiko“; to the ambassadors of the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the financial donation, thanks to which the purchase of the trilogy ” As I Opened Fire” by Roy Lichtenstein could be realised; to Mirko Kaliňák, the Mayor and a member of the Town Council of Medzilaborce for the financial contribution for the purposes of Andy Warhol´s original work ”Electric Chair “ and to Dr. Peter Chudík, the head of the Prešov Self-Governing District and a member of the Representative Group of the Prešov Self-Governing District for purchasing the precious portfolio of A. Warhol´s works  „Flowers (Black and White)“.

It needs to be said that a lot has been written about Warhol and also about his many friends and relatives – the well-known ones, those half-forgotten and even those completely unknown. I am sure that many others will write about him as time goes by and it looks as if Andy was walking alive by our side. Every publication will probably be different from the previous ones. It is delightful that everybody can take a pen and  blank paper and, as a sign of respect, try to write their own declaration.“

Michal  BYCKO

PaedDr. Michal BYCKO, PhD., F.A.B.I.

the Deputy-Director of the museum, the main curator, museum-educologist, an art theoretician and critic, the author of six monographs, dozens of academic articles on contemporary art, museum and gallery activities and museum-educology (focused on perception, suggestion and manipulation in art). A member of the American Biographical Institute in the USA (F.A.B.I.).

Declaration:

„If you want something not to work, set up a committee!“

”That is what it also looked like when the idea of founding the Andy Warhol Museum in Slovakia (!) was being realised. An amazing fact in our world is that the most intelligent creature – man – is so flexible and adaptable ...that what he spat on yesterday; today he is ready to pin on his chest as a badge.

Andy, discredited before 1989, today has become the tool of ”boast“ of primary, secondary and tertiary clerks, who, until the ”Velvet” revolution, did not have a good word to say about him. History is a very shaky witness to the status quo of the time and the ”stronger dog is always right...“. But we have not gone stupid, speechless or blind and, thanks to God, we are alive and can witness the truth, which is – if there was not for the absolute truth, which is unachievable for us – now plain to see. The question is, and I would say that´s what it depends on; how many of us who know the truth about the whole ”Golgotha-like” foundation of the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art  (AWMMA) in Medzilaborce, who witnessed the days in the mist of the lies and the Satanic offers in the future„ ... will close like a rotten door“  and deny themselves. Because, in the words of my late father: ”If you want to see a real beast, give a human indefinite power!“. I am not sure whether the mirror of the truth, which will be interpreted by someone, will not be a ”curved mirror “shoed by the force of the power  of the ”real beast “.

I am glad that today, the risky truth was taken by a young and unburdened man, who has worked hard and de facto and de jure built the truth about the establishment of the AWMMA and its work, bravely facing us and himself. That he wrote the real truth is most important. Even though “cheerleaders“ of delusions of grandeur will continue in brainwashing lax brains of the supporters and consumers of tabloids, that they are ”God’s soldiers“, they will give ”birth“ to new names, which they will paint with “fame“ and ”credit“ for nothing.

Štefan MAŽERIK, I would like to thank you also on behalf of John Warhol, Vlado Protivňák, Alexander Zozuľak, Michal Turok, Vladislav Grešlík and the whole small group of people, who have either with or without fear stood by our side and supported our idea to establish the museum. It is not easy for me to write words which smack of boasting. But let it be! Important is that you have written the TRUTH. It is also your notional ”15 minutes of fame “.

Similarly, I would like to thank Mrs Iveta RUSINKOVA for her tireless work in documenting the years of “15minutes of fame“ so exhaustively like nobody had ever done. The notional “15 minutes of fame“ is hers, too.

Let me thank all my contemporary and former colleagues, who worked in AWMMA either for a short or a longer period of time. I consider the presence of each of them a tile in a mosaic of our Institution´s ”existence “.

            And thus, Our Father, Andy, John, Paul, Fred, Archibald, Joel, Evelin, Pamela, Tim, Vincent, Billy, Riva, Mark, Jeffrey, Danny, James, Jiří,  „Agnes“, Saša, Michal, Ivan, Eugen, Vlado, Dano..., but also you, dad and mum, and my family ... THANK YOU!  If it was not for your will, willingness and support, there would not be 15 years of the museum. I SINCERELY WISH IT TO KEEP BEING STRONG AGAINST DILETTANTES AND NICE TO THOSE WHO KNOW THAT TO BE A TRUE MAN MEANS TO HAVE SPIRITUAL VALUES AND DIMENSION!“

Alexander ZOZUĽÁK

They have ”enticed” the world to Medzilaborce

The Vice-President of the Andy Warhol Association, an establishing member of AWMMA in Medzilaborce and the Rusyn Revival. He works as a journalist and editor-in-chief of Rusyn periodicals and non-periodicals. One of the most significant personalities of the Rusyn Revival in Slovakia after1989, the Deputy of the World Council of Rusyns who is the chair of other Rusyn organisations and institutions. A working artist.

Declaration:

„Who? Especially three people: Andy Warhol, John Warhol and Michal Bycko. It is mainly they to who appropriate gratitude goes today. Thanks to them, Medzilaborce has become world-famous and today, after 15 years of the AWMMA’s existence, many art fans and tourists from abroad know about it. They would never look for such a town as Medzilaborce on the map, they would never visit it, they would never know that there are some Rusyns and that the most famous Rusyn in the world is no one else but Andy Warhol, whose parents were Rusyns and came from a nearby Rusyn village on North-East of Slovakia – Mikova. Warm thanks to you three for that!

That a museum with Andy Warhol’s works and artefacts in Medzilaborce was the first to be established, is a fact not appropriately respected and appreciated by many Rusyns from the homeland and abroad as well as other inhabitants of Slovakia, which is sad. Good evidence of this is the museum’s Visitor’s Book, which shows that the stand of modern art of the world-famous representative of pop-art is more often visited  by foreigners than local people, which is sorrowful, but it also confirms the following saying: “You will never be a prophet at home!“ Unfortunately. However, I believe that the young generation will at least partly correct the saying by an increased interest in the unique museum of Medzilaborce and the personality of Andy Warhol as well as the effort and work of Michal Bycko, the establisher of the museum and the Andy Warhol Association.

Speaking of the foundation of the Andy Warhol Association and the idea of establishing a museum of Andy Warhol’s art nowhere else but in Medzilaborce; on this festive occasion of the 15^th anniversary of the AWMMA, I must also ”blow my own trumpet“. But not in the way many people unworthily do nowadays, but truthfully and accurately. I have to admit that I was also present at John Warhol’s (Andy Warhol’s brother) first visit to Medzilaborce and his parents’ birthplace in Mikova. His dream came true also on behalf of his already late brother. It happened at the visit of Vladimír Protivňák’s relatives, where, together with him, it was also the two of us visiting – Michal Bycko and myself. On the same occasion, such an idea was born as to, with the help of John Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation in the USA, establish the museum nowhere else but in the Rusyn centre, which is the town of Medzilaborce; and not in such big cities as, in the times of Czechoslovakia, Bratislava or Prague were. Michal Bycko not only suggested the idea to John Warhol, but also, with the help of several supporters, realised! (Then, I could take part not only as an art enthusiast, but also as a journalist and interview John Warhol for the first time, as well as to pass the news about the unique intention to establish an Andy Warhol Museum in Medzilaborce to, at least, the Rusyn “world”.) And it has always been M. Bycko, who is the heart of the museum. And that is why, on my behalf and behalf of the Rusyn organisations and institutions that I represent, such as the World Congress of Rusyns, the Academy of Rusyn Culture in the Slovak Republic, the Slovak Association of the Rusyn Organisations and Rusyn and Ľudové Noviny Press; I would like to say the following: “Вдяка Ті, брате-Русине, лем вытрим дале в зачатій і зреалізованій роботї, бо без сердця умерать тїло, а то все є велика страта. Дякую Ті, же єсь „притягнув“ світ до русиньскых Міджілаборець.“  (Thank you, brother Rusyns, keep doing the work you have been doing, because the body would die without the heart, and that would be a great loss. Thank you for bringing light to the Rusyn Medzilaborce.)

Michal ŠMAJDA

Warhol and Medzilaborce –  “the land of dreams and the reality “

A novelist, folklorist and an ethnographer. He published dozens of monographs (novels, short stories, academic studies...). The establisher of the Museum of Rusyn-Ukrainian Culture in Krásny Brod  (when established, it was called the Museum of Ukrainian Culture).

He lives and works in Krásny Brod near Medzilaborce.

Declaration:

In the history and presence of every land, ethnic group and nationality, there are personalities who form the “mark“ of its spiritual quality. The Rusyns are a dying-out nation, which has, for the centuries, lived in the regions of Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania… where the Rusyn, Lemko, Boyko and Hocul ethnic groups are living nowadays. Andy Warhol was the fruit of love of two modest and poor people - Andrej Varchol and Júlia (Ula) Zavacka. He was born far away from his parents’ fatherland, but his parents presented him with a piece of the fatherland in form of genes, upbringing, belief and traditions; so that it stayed in him for his all productive life. A simple boy of Rusyn parents from a peripheral part of Pittsburgh, achieved the Olympus of Fame in art and forever obtained a brightly twinkling star in the sky of the fame.

Dr. Michal Bycko said that Pittsburgh to New York is like Medzilaborce to Prague. It is said that everything repeats this. Andy who came from Pittsburgh, conquered fame in New York, the Mecca of art, so that he could come back, for the eternal peace, to the Rusyn cemetery in Pittsburgh. As a tribute, the town has founded a museum (The Andy Warhol Museum). However, even before then, thanks to John Warhol and Michal Bycko, Andy could symbolically return to his parents’ birthplace, when the AWMMA in Medzilaborce was established. Many of us know the almost thorny journey of the museum’s founding, but no one competent has overcome himself and thought of openly declaring the credit of these two men (John and Michal). Simply, nobody has thanked them in public. Apart from Prof. Stadtrucker, who, 15 years ago in the Weekly Magazine of Literature, expressed his gratitude. Since, as if we all have gone deaf, blind, as if we have forgotten. Well, let me, an old man who has dedicated all his life to culture and art, express my gratitude.

THANK YOU, MR JOHN WARHOL, AND ALSO YOU, MICHAL BYCKO, FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE THING YOU HAVE DONE FOR THE FAME OF OUR ETHNIC GROUP AND OUR STATE IN FORM OF THE LOVELY MUSEUM OF ANDY WARHOL IN MEDZILABORCE.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for you, my dear friends, the employees of the museum, and wishing lots of health, strength and success. If it was not for your museum, this part of the world would be forgotten. It would stay only “ .. in the shade of the forgotten ancestors“.

Warholovce

In Medzilaborce, the pavements, car parks and the amphitheatre are being repaired because of the „painter Andrijko“; but still, the museum’s roof is letting in water.

If it had not been for Warhol, there would be no museum, and if there was no museum, Medzilaborce would probably be just a nondescript town on the map of North-East Slovakia. Not even the money for its promotion would find its way there. The town is still out-of-sight, out-of-mind; but it has an extraordinary museum. It was opened fifteen years ago with great pride, and since, it has found its way into the world. Only the provincial town, the regional capital neighbouring the birth place of the king of pop-art’s parents has not been successful. As if the museum and the town lived different lives. Medzilaborce, thanks to Andrijko, whose fellow-citizens speak Rusyn, has recently obtained further millions from the European foundation. They will be used in a “special” way – without creativity and originality. They will not make the town an open gallery of arts to promote it, they will rather repair what needs to be done – the pavements, a run-down amphitheatre and the car parks. And, moreover, a Warhol village will be built – some kind of mini open-air museum, of which the only connection with Warhol will probably be its name. A rather large outlay for a small return.

Mausoleum: „The museum is located at the right place, but still, not in the right time,“ says Michal Bycko, the curator of the museum and a museo-educologist, as his calling card says under a black-and-white portrait of the Rusyn superstar. It was he who set in motion the issue of the town of six and a half thousand inhabitants located at the North-East end of Slovakia and in 1991, together with other enthusiasts founded the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art. For some, until today, an incomprehensible enterprise of several fools. Michal Bycko has made his American dream reality – to have, in Slovakia, a memorial to the roots of an artist whose parents moved from nearby Mikova to America. The New York Andy Warhol Foundation presented several valuable works. At the beginning, there was nowhere to hang them, there was no interest. After the fall of communism, during which Warhol was considered an unworthy artist, everybody started to adopt him as a cause celèbre. The Poles, the Slovenians, the Czechs and the Hungarians. The truth is that Medzilaborce blindly stumbled upon Warhol. If it had not been for the socialist planners, who ordered the building of a megalo-maniacal cultural house opposite the Orthodox church, the original works would have ended up somewhere entirely different. In Medzilaborce, a building and six million Slovak crowns for its reconstruction have been set aside for the museum. The money has somehow disappeared and so the following decision has been made: the works will be hung in the cultural house, which has not even  passed an initial inspection. Despite the protests of the locals, the enormous building resembling a mausoleum has become Andy Warhol’s citadel. The complicated soundproofing system, which was supposed to separate a wedding party in the restaurant from a film screening, has been ripped out, bare walls have appeared and spectacular rooms have been created, into which, immediately after its opening, water began to seep. And it still seeps today. The museum can be found in every tourist guide to Slovakia. However, this is not enough to attract tourists to come to this area. Unfortunately.

Warhol City: At the municipal office Warhol is presented almost as a saviour. Not even Pittsburgh where he was born is so enamoured by him as Medzilaborce. The projects carrying his name are supposed to promote the town. At least that is what it says on paper. “Although Warhol is not a remedy for unemployment, many working positions are connected to him,” says Vladislav Višňovský, the director of the first-contact centre. He also adds that “Medzilaborce, on its own, is a dump”. And that is how the prodigal son, with the help of the European Union Foundation, returns to his parents’ fatherland. He, while he was alive, never came to Slovakia. The first stage of the Warhol City project cost two and a half million crowns for “imaging” alone. For this money, three bus stations and six pop-art style facades were “Warholised”. The town came to life in places. However, Dr Bycko as the author of the artistic proposal is not happy with the realisation. According to him, it is of poor quality. “The platforms were supposed to give out light. I proposed newsstands and a campsite in the shape of Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s soup tins. None of this was realised,” he laments. Several facades are not enough. The whole town should flourish with Warhol; however, it does not have enough chance.

The Warhol Open Air Museum: Andy has also become the focus of the second, more difficult part of the project, for which the town has obtained thirty million crowns. However, it does not only involve the European foundation. One and a half million had to be approved by the town council from the Medzilaborce budget. The state gave a sum of six million. This is what the rules are. “It is one of a few well-thought-through projects. A ski lift can be anywhere; Warhol cannot,“ declares engineer Višňovský. The second stage is rather more building-oriented. The pavements, car parks will be repaired, the amphitheatre will be reconstructed and an open-air museum named Warhol Village will be built. “It will contain mini replicas of architecture typical for this region, including the church in Mikova,“ we learn at the municipal office. „What does it have to do with Warhol?“ asks Michal Bycko expressing his dislike of the miniature village. The clerks have their own secret agenda. He, allegedly, usurps a patent on Warhol. It is true that, for a long time, their ideas on promoting the town have differed. Is it mutual silence or trench warfare? It is hard to say. At the office, they are already planning the third phase of the project. Maybe, they will also deal with the repairs of the saturated museum. It seems that the town representatives have a clear idea. “We want Medzilaborce to symbolise Andy and become attractive to tourists,“ says project coordinator Adrián Kaliňák. The local Romany community are also actively involved. They have already stolen the underground cables from the open-air museum that is being prepared.

What do we need Warhol for? How do the local inhabitants perceive Warhol? As a world-famous artist, a fool, lunatic, weirdo? “None of the above. They use him to boast in spas when they mention they come from Medzilaborce,“ Curator Bycko says with conviction. “What good is Warhol, when we do not have work?” was the legitimate question posed by Miro Hudák, a local man. He is right in his own way. He does not care much for Warhol, but he has visited the museum where the entrance fee is a hundred crowns. The first and last time, similarly to most tourists who were drawn there by the work of the king of pop art. Yearly, fourteen to seventeen thousand visitors view his work, two thirds of whom come from abroad. And there is something to admire. Apart from other things, over a hundred original works. Their value has been estimated at tens, maybe even, hundreds of millions of crowns. “It is a window through which we can view Warhol’s creative body of work. A little sample of everything,“ declares the leadership of the museum. “Nobody for miles around has gone into Warhol‘s whole life and work as much as I have,” says Michal Bycko antipathetically. He is 54 and Andy has become his fate. Because of him he got “stuck” in  Medzilaborce and he hardly ever leaves. “I am crazy about him and now it’s driving me mad,” he admits, with one condition: He does not want his picture taken with Warhol or his works. The situation of Andy’s double, Endi from nearby Rokytovce, is diametrically opposed.

Doppelganger Endi: Since František Lakata, an Art teacher at a Primary School in Medzilaborce, played Andy’s role in the film called Absolute Warhol, the whole village has called him Endi. When he puts his make-up, wig and glasses on, it is like Andy staring back at you. It was none other than Michal Bycko who discovered him. Allegedly, he looked at him and saw Andy. Suddenly, the museum had a mascot and Endi became famous. Since then, he has not missed any exhibition opening, he “does” Warhol. Just next to the local gym in Rokytovce, he made a local gallery from a former school. It was named after his local nickname - Endi. He exhibits his paintings, sculptures, woodcraft – his art. He admires Andy. “He was not a Slovak, he was a Rusyn, and, moreover, more famous than Vasil Biľak.“ Allegedly, Endi even has a similar voice to Andy’s. “His brother John told me,“ he clarifies. At a school, he set up a board as a tribute to his double. Apart from other things, painted-on women’s high-heel shoes are hanging on it. He makes them with children. Just like Warhol, when he started to conquer the world.

Unlucky Miková: While the news about Warhol City is also released by foreign press agencies and mass media; the dying-out village of Miková, located 13 kilometres from Medzilaborce, stays in the shadows. The birthplace of Andy’s parents. “They have stolen Andrijko from us,“ complain the local inhabitants, addressing the Medzilaborcians. „We have no memorial to Andy in our village,“ Mayor Alexander Vaco guesses everything is over. However, Miková has already had big plans, too. A memorial house and a car park for six buses. Nothing of this worked out. To commemorate Warhol, they named the festival of Rusyn culture after him. Only a well and a pear tree, which has recently been pruned by electricians, are left of his parents’ legacy. The original house with a straw roof has long since disappeared. However, crowds of curious people come. Now and then, they visit Ján Závacky, Andy Warhol’s cousin, a former mayor. “I knew I had a painter cousin in America. I thought he painted houses. Just later, an artist hatched out of him. If the world recognises him, I am proud that his roots go back to Mikova.“ It upsets him that, despite the villages’ best efforts, there is nothing left of Warhol. Maybe just plenty of namesakes, most of them in the cemetery. And their names are spelled differently. Varchola, not Warhol! “I come from nowhere,“ that was his stock-in-phrase sentence. He would hide his roots, but they are mirrored in his work.

Juraj Sedlák

14.07.2006

Warhol is better known in Serbia than in our country

One main representative catalogue-publication (82 pages of the text, more than 200 black and white and colour reproductions) and three small catalogues, dimensional placards along the road in the distance of 30 kilometres close to Nový Sad, miniature promotional items, great interest from part of media... – all of the abovementioned was the natural part of the project ANDY WARHOL – POST POP-ART IN  SLOVAKIA in the Serbian town of Nový Sad.

The project consisted of more parts – the individual events, exhibitions mainly. The first exhibition, and that is the mail-art international exhibition Homage Andy Warhol out of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art of Andy Warhol (MMUAW) in Medzilaborce and Voyvodina Slovak, Mr. Jaroslav Supek, was opened on 25th April 2006 at  06.00 p.m. in Bel Art Gallery. The second exhibition – Slovak and Serbian pop-art was opened at the same evening at 07.00 p.m. in Voyvodina Museum. The third exhibition under the title Flowers Black and White (series of 10 black and white A. Warhol paintings) was opened at that evening at 08.00 p.m. in Centre of visual culture. At the same time in the cinema Bioskop of Cultural Centre of the town the presentation of documentary film of known Polish director Stanislaw Mucha – Absolut of Warhol  took place. On the second day, on 26th April 2006 in Municipal Information Centre the presentation of the project of Municipal Administration Authority in Medzilaborce – Warhol City took place and was introduced by Mr. Vladimír Protivňák, the officer of the Municipal Administration Authority. The forth and main exhibition had its opening in the Gallery of Voyvodina Bank in Novy Sad at 08.00 p.m. under the title WARHOL and thousands of spectators were coming to see it until 01.00 a.m.!!!

More than 300 exhibits formed the most large-scale exhibition of Andy Warhol works in Serbia. Organisers in Novy Sad invested the millions into the project. Thousands of people in long line were coming to the exhibitions in Novy Sad as they used to be queuing in front of the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow. They came to see the exhibited art works and artefacts about the work, life, and Rusyn origin of Andy Warhol. About 100 original works, more than 50 artefacts, documents, the art works of Slovak and Serbian post pop-artists and known world mail-artists formed the content of “festival” dedicated to the greatest Rusyn of 20^th century in the world – Andy Warhol, which shall last until 20^th May 2006. Not only the project organisers (the Municipality of Nový Sad under the patronage of the Minister of Culture of Voyvodina and the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in Medzilaborce) and authors - curators (Dr. Michal Bycko, PhD. and Mgr. Martin Cubjak from Slovakia, Jaroslav Supek, M.A. and Dr. Sava Stepanov from Serbia), but also the media and alike were almost shocked because of the great interest. Three days after the exhibition opening the fax asking for the re-implementation of the project in Belgrade was delivered to the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art!  

This is the present condition Warhol enjoys in Serbia. Wish we get our acts together as well and start realising what we have at home and decide to present things the world is interested in. Hardly anybody would take interest in neverending folklore performances and gnocchi with sheep cheese. We live in the third millennium!

Dr. Michal Bycko, PhD.

one of the project authors

This is what it looked like in front of the Voyvodina Bank Gallery in late evening hours on 26^th April 2006, where the main exhibition  – WARHOL was installed.

Exhibition premises of the Voyvodina Bank Gallery, displaying on its front wall the

series of 10 works of A. Warhol under the title Ladies and Gentlemans.

From the opening of the main exhibition Warhol: (from left to right) The opening exhibition curator Mgr. Martin Cubjak, Minister of Culture of Voyvodina Radovan Jokič, the Directress of the Andy Warhol Modern Art Museum in Medzilaborce Mgr. Valika Maďarová and 3^rd secretary of the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Serbia Tomáš Ferko from Belgrade.

Mail-art work by Michala Bycka as a response to the project Andy Warhol – post

pop-art in Slovakia.

THE GALLERY OF SOME OF THE PAINTINGS

WORLD-FAMOUS RUSYN, ANDY WARHOL

Details of Renaissance Paintings; (Paolo Uccello, St. George and The Dragon, 1460)

Medium  Screenprint on Arches Aquarelle (Cold Pressed) paper.

Year  1984 Size  32" x 44", image 25" x 37"

 Edition  of 50, 12 AP, 5 PP, 4 HC, signed and numbered in pencil lower left. There are 36 TP portfolios , signed and numbered in pencil lower left, containing print II.316A and one image from each of Details portfolios(II.316-319, II.320-323, II.324-327).

Misc. Portfolio of four screenprints.
Printer: Rupert Jasen Smith, New York
Publisher: Editions Schellmann & Klüser, Munich, Germany / New York

Reigning Queens: Queen Elizabeth II Of The United Kingdom

Medium  Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board.

Year  1984 Size  39.375" x 31.5"

Edition of 40, 10 AP, 5 PP, 3HC, 30 TP containing only one image of each queen, signed and numbered in pencil lower right

Misc.

Portfolio of sixteen screenprints.
Printer: Rupert Jasen Smith, New York
Publisher: Geaorge C. P. Mulder, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Title     Saint Apollonia ( F/Sch: 330 – 333 )

Medium  Screenprint on Essex Offset Kid Finish paper.

Year     1984

Size      30" x 22", 76,2 x 55.9 cm

Edition of 250, 35 AP, 8 PP, 80 individual TP not in portfolios, 20 individual TP not in portfolios numbered in Roman numerals, signed and numbered in pencil lower left. The prints TP 1/80-29/80 are on Arches 88 paper with the image reversed, 43" x 30.5"; TP 30/80-80/80 and TP I/XX-XX/XX are on Essex Offset Kid Finish paper, 35" x 23"; image 30" x 22".

Misc.

Printer: Rupert Jasen Smith, New York

Publisher: Dr. Frank Braun, Düsseldorf, Germany

Artist  Andy Warhol

Title  Wayne Gretzky #99

Medium  Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board.

Year  1984

Size  40" x 32"

Edition There are 46 TP signed and numbered in pencil on verso by the executor of The Estate of Andy Warhol on a stamped certificate of authenticity. There are 6 PP, which are trial proof variations, signed and numbered in pencil lower left. Each print is unique.

Unique prints

Artist  Andy Warhol

Title     Hans Christian Andersen ( F/Sch II: 394 -397 )

Medium   Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board.

Year     1987

Size     38" x 38", 96,5 x 96,5 cm

Edition of 25, 8 AP, 3 PP, 5 HC, numbered in pencil and signed in pencil on verso by the executor of The Estate of Andy Warhol, the publisher, and the printer on a stamped certificate of authenticity. There are 36 TP signed and numbered in pencil as noted above.

Misc.

Printer: Rupert Jasen Smith, New York

Publisher: Art Expo Danmark, Odense, Denmark