Andy Warhol 365 Takes: The Andy Warhol Museum Collection [Hardcover]

Staff of Andy Warhol Museum (Author)

Book Description

Series: 365 | Publication Date: May 12, 2004

Andy Warhol was one of the most compelling figures of the 20th-century art world whose body of work transformed the landscape of contemporary art. He was also a notorious collector who saved practically everything that came his way. In 1994, seven years after the artist's death, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh became the repository not only for a substantial body of his artwork and films, but also for the Time Capsules into which he obsessively deposited a lifetime's worth of ephemera and personal memorabilia. For this book—created in the same format as Abrams' best-selling Earth From Above: 365 Days—the museum has gathered highlights of its collection. Illustrated with almost 400 objects, from paintings to party invitations, the volume also features lively commentaries by the museum's staff as well as quotes from Warhol's own irreverent writings. Timed to coincide with the celebration of the museum's 10-year anniversary, this book will serve as both an introduction to and a handbook for the most extensive collection anywhere of this iconic artist's work.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you're a fan, your bookshelf is crying out for Andy Warhol: 365 Takes. And if you're not, this artfully designed volume may very well turn you into one. Read it straight through or dip in anywhere. Either way, you get an illustrated tour of Warhol's friends, lovers, personal history and obsessions (shoes, religion, jewels, mortality), as well as his art. Organized in a vaguely thematic way that blithely ignores chronology, this compact volume serves up a four-decade feast of creativity in bite-size nuggets: a very Warholian approach. Facing pages juxtapose a Warhol image with a well-chosen morsel of text. Drawn from diverse sources, including The Andy Warhol Diaries, the texts illuminate the images with useful tidbits of insider information. Reproductions of Warhol's work reveal his extraordinary range and inventiveness, from the delicate, lyrical drawing for a jazz record cover from the 1950s to rueful self-portrait photos in drag from the early 1980s. Of course, much of the famous work is here as well—the Death and Disaster Series, the Brillo boxes, the Three Marilyns, the celebrity portraits of the 1070s, the collaborations with the Velvet Underground. One of the most intriguing aspects of the book is the way it uses Warhol's vast personal collection of ephemera to show how a newspaper headline, shop window or movie star magazine could inform the look of his art. This great compendium of Warholiana is marred only by the occasionally smug, fanzine tone of remarks by The Andy Warhol Museum staff. There’s no need to overstate the case for Warhol; his outsized reputation is secure. --Cathy Curtis

From Publishers Weekly

This "year in the life" of Warhol's artistic and social productions (was there a difference?) actually spans decades. More than 15 years after Warhol's death, his work retains an uncanny ability to make the most banal elements of American life sharp and subversive; these 365 full-page 91/2"×61/2" color illustrations, with pertinent (or impertinent), texts on facing pages) includes the movies (Blow Job, Taylor Mead's Ass), the silk screens (Mao etc.), the entourage (endless) and much more in celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Warhol museum (in Warhol's birthplace of Pittsburgh, Pa.). The Andy Warhol Diaries and The Philosophy of Andy Warhol are overdrawn on for the text. The illustrations are fresher and include early drawings; film notes and shooting schedules; photographs of Warhol's tape recorder, telephone and wig collection; and a magazine quiz filled out by Warhol. These are counterposed with reproductions of some (but not all) of Warhol's better known completed pieces, such as Campbell's Soup or Elvis 11 Times. However, the inclusion of "contextual" material like photographs of Brooke Shields or the Jacksons could have easily been replaced by more of Warhol's own artwork. While the range reproduced shows Warhol's extraordinary versatility in mediums, whether film, silkscreen, painting or people-collecting, no book can convey the shocking impact of his work.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 744 pages
• Publisher: Abrams; First Edition edition (May 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810943298
• ISBN-13: 978-0810943292
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 9.5 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #129,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andy Warhol, a painter and graphic artist, also produced a significant body of film work, including his famous Chelsea Girls. He was equally well known in the late sixties and early seventies as resident host at his studio, The Factory, where one could listen to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground and rub elbows with Edie Sedgwick. Warhold died in New York in 1987.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warhol Lives, October 29, 2004

By 

calmly - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Andy Warhol 365 Takes: The Andy Warhol Museum Collection (Hardcover)

Even at list price, this book is a great bargain.

The binding of this book is itself a work of art. It's also just one clear demonstration of how much care this staff puts into what they do.If you are an artist, you'll want to get the staff of the Andy Warhol Museum to come work at your museum.

The web site of the museum is another sign of how special this staff is. They even include a step by step opportunity for you to learn how Warhol made his silkscreens by making one yourself. As a Web application and as a learning experience, it's a standout and you can email the result to friends.

In this book, they had the wisdom not to try to present the definitive Warhol. That's why it is 365 takes and not 1 take.
Wouldn't you have liked to have lived your life so richly that 365 takes were needed to give a sense of who you are.

Granted, each of these takes (images on one page and text on the facing page) can't go very deep. However, they aren't fragments, each tries to be complete in itself. Chronology and flow are eschewed. The staff isn't trying to sell you on how Warhol was or how he got to be as he is, they are simply sharing with you these views, via his work, so you can perhaps develop a sense for yourself of what Warhol is about.

What really sinks in after just one pass thru these 365 takes, is that Warhol was about a lot. He had incredible coverage.

Because this book is so beautiful, the trashiness I'd come to associate with the Warhol scene isn't that apparent. The differences (from conventional lives) are. The productivity is. The fascinations are. The richness of experience is. The lack of judgmentalism is.

Seeing the web site and this book makes me wish a lot to visit Pittsburgh and see the Andy Warhol Museum first hand. And if this staff indeed somehow were all at another museum, I'd certainly want to go there. This museum staff is outstanding and one way you can tell how outstanding they are is to get this remarkably inexpensive high-quality book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AN ANDY A DAY ... MOST ARTFUL, INDEED!, November 2, 2004

By 

Alan W. Petrucelli (THE ENTERTAINMENT REPORT (ALAN W. PETRUCELLI)) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Andy Warhol 365 Takes: The Andy Warhol Museum Collection (Hardcover)

Think of this as an Andy a day keeping the aggravation away. Compiled by the staff of the Andy Warhol Museum (located in Pittsburgh, PA, and this year celebrating its tenth anniversary), this is a monumental, if scattered, collection of everything Warhol, deliberately non-traditional and open-ended. Fashion sketches from the `50s, Polaroids, the Brillo boxes, stills from his movies and television appearances, silkscreens and pencil drawings, the Death and Disaster Series, the Three Marilyns, the collaborations with the Velvet Underground ... it's all here, and it's all interlaced with quotes from Warhol, and "experts" on Warhol. The experts, today, sound like bozos, but there is humor and humanity in all of Warhol's comments. 365 Takes is a big book, perhaps too big, since Warhol is best savored in smaller doses. Still, the book certainly whets one's appetite for more concentrated, linear works of this great artist. Warhol's take on the middle of the twentieth century is astoundingly accurate and informed. Certainly very much the artist as an outsider observing the current culture, his views are surprisingly kind and simple. Let's face it: We all love gossip, dirty pictures and celebrities. Maybe we couldn't admit it back then, but it was true. And, of course, we all love Campbell's Soup.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Andy Warhol: 365 Takes: The Andy Warhol Museum Collection, January 9, 2007

By 

Simon J. Davies (Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Andy Warhol 365 Takes: The Andy Warhol Museum Collection (Hardcover)

Huge book - don't let appearance on the internet fool you, it's a brick (about 3inches thick!) and packed full of information; Andy's life, his work, his love his passion it's amazing.

The book takes you on a journey through early years to his death and how his art transformed throughout his career. It shows Andy's sketches and un-released art and art from his private collection.

Fascinating and a brilliant coffee table book.

Stunning 5 stars