Pop Art
is a way of loving things, said that eclectic genius of
Andy Warhol
.
And his extraordinary creativity has not only changed the art world but has also had a tremendous influence on
pop music
.
The meeting between these two different artistic expressions took place in 1966 when Warhol saw the experimental rock band the Velvet Underground;
what they expressed through their music was according to Warhol, very similar to what he himself expressed in his art.
The band had just performed and had been simultaneously fired in the trunk, the show in the opinion of the organizers had been excessively vulgar and over the top.
Warhol and the Velvet Underground met at the tables of the Cafe Bizarre in Greenwich Village in New York
and that was only the beginning, from there the start of the years of collaboration with the
Factory, which will be made available by Warhol as a test room
.
The cover of the Velvet Underground's debut album, designed by Andy Warhol himself, became a real icon, sometimes replacing the title of the album, often simply called
"banana album"
. The original cover was slightly different from how we know it today. In fact,
the peel was sticky and could be peeled off
and, revealing a pink banana, below, with an obvious sexual allusion. All accompanied by the words "Peel slowly and see", peel slowly and see.
Warhol's idea for the cover was considered absolutely brilliant
by Verve Records, which had bought the distribution rights for the album, which is why they invested heavily to buy a machine capable of producing what the artist had requested.
The sexual allusion, however, was difficult to achieve and greatly lengthened the distribution times
, so over the years it returned to being simply the yellow banana that we can find today in any record store.
The disc contains very famous and timeless pieces such as
Sunday Morning
, I'm Waiting For The Man, Femme Fatale, Venus In Furs, Run Run Run, Heroin, There She Goes Again, I'll Be Your Mirror, to name a few. Contrary to what one might think,
the record did not go well at all
, The Velvet Underground & Nico recorded
the sale of no more than 30,000 copies in the first 5 years
. Nevertheless, the importance it had in the history of music was epochal.
Without that record, perhaps, there would have been no punk, new wave and all the alternative rock of the following years
. For this reason some, like Brian Eno, are convinced that “each of those 30,000 who bought it have founded a band“.
Among the pop works that will be exhibited at the Restelliartco Gallery in Rome from May 28 to July 31, within the "
Pop sounds good
"
exhibition
stands out the cover with the famous banana
in a very rare copy signed by Warhol
and, even more importantly, a among the very few with the adhesive cover
. Within the exhibition spaces of the Gallery there are also other works by Warhol such as
the "Kellogg's Frosted Flakes" from
1979, the "
Kellogg's Rise Krispies"
from 1988, then the famous screen prints of Campbell's Soup "Vegetarian Vegetable" and "Hot Dog Bean" of Sunday B. Morning - After Warhol, 2015, the "Skulls" rare work of 1976, the 80s "One Hundred Lire" banknote , the banknote of the "2 Jefferson Dollars" of 1976 and the "Marilyn / This is not by me" of the Sunday B. Morning edition of 1970.