Michael McKenzie (born 1953 in New York, United States) is an American artist and writer. His mother a fourth generation Irish/German and his father of recent Scottish immigrants. He began writing, drawing, painting and publishing at a young age, his first publication, at age 5, was Two Cents Plain, a four-page magazine (selling for 2 cents) he made using a mimeograph machine at his father's office. A fluke meeting at the 1964 World's Fair with his grandmother introduced him to Philip Johnson, Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana, all three of whom he would later work with.
He took up journalism mainly under the mentorship of Shapiro and Truman Capote who encouraged him to pursue that artform "because if you want to know what great artists are really like they can fool you with media stories and awards but not with their eyes".[citation needed] To that end he interviewed and/or photographed a wide portfolio of artists who interested him including Capote, Williams, Albee, Warhol, Rivers, Nureyev, Lou Reed, The Ramones, Blondie, Madonna; such leading sports figures as Ali, Jordan and Namath and a wide scope of comedians including Carlin, Klein, Murray, Belushi, Radner, Joan Rivers, and Phyllis Diller. He paid his way through college and grad school as a portrait photographer and added silkscreening when he worked on a portrait project with Andy Warhol who introduced him to that print making/painting form. He took his MFA under John Ashbery and, on the advice of comedian George Carlin who he had interviewed and photographed, wrote his first book and the first on the television show Saturday Night Live! while still in school. He followed that up with successful titles on Madonna ["Lucky Star" Contemporary/MacMillan Books] and "Billy Joel: Piano Man" [Ballantine Books], the first books on both of those artists. Collectively, his titles have sold over 1,000,000 copies and been published on five continents in 12 languages.
"Lucky Star: The Madonna Story, Contemporary Books, 1985. [Also Basis of ABC-TV show]
"New, Used, and Improved: Art for the Eighties, Abbeville, 1987.
"Larry Rivers: Prints and Multiples [Museum Books 1991]
"Madonna, the Early Days: 65 Classic Photographs, Worldwide Televideo Enterprises (New York), 1993.
"Robert Indiana: American Dream [MFA Books, 1995] with Robert Creeley
"Dark Poetics: The Art of Donald Sultan [MFA Books, 1997]
"Popular Art in America [Fotofolio, 2003]
"The Metropolitan {with Philip Johnson} [Fotofolio 2005][4]
"Meadowcraft: A Hampton’s Classic [Fotofolio 2008]
"Robert Indiana A – Z [AI Books 2013]
Art
McKenzie's clients included Time Inc, Rolling Stone, Sony, Playboy, Flemington Furs, Halston, Random House, Putnam Books, Ballantine Books, Scholastic, Stern, Der Spiegel, Scholastic, Harpers Bazaar, Coca-Cola, Nike, NBC, CBS, Paris Match and numerous other corporate, advertising, book and periodical clients. His studio was constantly working and, like one of his influences, Andy Warhol, there was no separation between his art and his commercial work. In 1978 he was named "Upcoming Photographer of the Year" by Art Direction Magazine. For several years he oil painted photographs and in 1978, when he met and worked with Warhol, realized that Andy's silkscreen technique converting photography to painting was what he was after. From 1977 – 1985 McKenzie had over 20 one man shows on four continents. In 1979 he curated the notorious 'Punk Art Show' which featured his portraits of Sid Vicious, Joey Ramone and Blondie and included original works by Joey Ramone, Chris Stein, Arturo Vega and John Holmstrom, founder of Punk Magazine. In 1981/83 he created a portfolio called 'Androgyny' which included early portraits of the then Androgynous Madonna as well as downtown performers John Sex, Bush Tetras and Michael Alago. He decided to 'make the portfolio come alive' and created a Kurt Weill-like cabaret act with the people from the portfolio. Titled 'Androgyny Cabaret' it played in numerous downtown NYC venues and was the subject of a two-hour documentary by the BBC which included a live guest appearance by members of the Clash.
By 1987 his silkscreen works attracted the attention of other artists and he began publishing works by numerous important painters using silkscreen techniques he mastered over the course of a decade. From this, American Image, his studio was born. He continued to show his portraits mainly in NY, Miami and Asia and is currently working on a book of his portraits and stories titled MAD GENIUSES: ANDY WARHOL AND HIS CIRCLE.
Publishing
McKenzie founded American Image Art in 1977 with photography and painting but after ten years of working in silkscreen, largely photography driven, the focus switched to screen printing with the desire to take techniques Warhol used to the next level. In pursuit of creating ultimate ‘silkscreen paintings’ he began as always with his own work then found the perfect foil for his silkscreen painting concept with Larry Rivers, an artist he admired since he was a teen. Perhaps the most true painter of his generation, Rivers’ work provided a true test for McKenzie's silkscreen vision and the first editioned piece they did, Golden Tales, required 53 proofs along with hand oil painting by Rivers on each print in the edition. The work was showcased at the then leading-edge Chicago Art Fair and its size – 40” x 58” – along with its complexity and hand oil painting took printmaking to another level. Concurrently, a series of works on canvas were made which were further hand articulated and sold out on 57th Street in NYC. American Image went on to do many important editions with Rivers in mediums ranging from massive screen prints to and this focus on a single artist became signatory to the studio.
McKenzie also curated the show that helped move Miami's Bass Museum into contemporary in 1988 as well as important shows for The Nassau County Museum, Norton Museum, Boca Raton Museum and The Detroit Jewish Museum. He is currently working on a major book/travelling exhibition of WORD ART to include Indiana, Ruscha, Kruger and numerous others. “Again”, he stated, “I just see a cultural hole ignoring this as a critical movement in art which no one seems to fill in. It’s a link between poetry and art and these two creative forms have always been central to art history and to my life, so I’m lured into curating once again.”[citation needed]
Over the course of 35 plus years American Image has published a Who's Who of American Contemporary art including Warhol, Wesselman, Indiana, Oldenburg, Lichtenstein, D’Arcangelo, Katz, Sultan, Haring, Cutrone, Rivers, Paschke, Bell, Borofsky, Stella and recent works with what he calls Urban Pop: Crash, English, AIko, Eaton and Witz. In 2007 the studio embarked on a worldwide project with Pop Artist Robert Indiana to follow up his masterpiece LOVE with THE word for the new millennium. Indiana chose HOPE and it became a seminal part of Barack Obama's Presidential campaign, ultimately raising 7 figures as well as consciousness and votes. In 2010, The Today Show featured the story on HOPE declaring HOPE THE word for the next generation. A travelling museum show of the works created by the studio with Indiana opened in Fall 2013 at The Munson Williams Proctor Museum, where Indiana first studied Art, and will travel through 2016 toured by Landau Travelling Exhibitions.
Lawsuit
The firm Morgan Art Foundation operating as an LLC out of PO boxes in Switzerland, the Bahamas and Panama among other known places filed a suite against American Image claiming it owned the trademarks and copyrights of Robert Indiana. After hiring multiple copyright attorneys and rights experts no such copyrights or trademarks were found and both Morgan and its licensing agent Artist Rights Society are now in Federal Court defending RICO charges for selling over 1200 licenses to rights they can't show they own a classic racketeering issue.
On August 21, 2019 the Supreme Court ruled that American Image would be the exclusive publishers, producers and dealers for Hope, which Michael McKenzie created in 2007. Court Index No. 653809/19 [5] Indiana himself wrote that McKenzie and American Image were his collaborators for the last decades of his life and those works have been the subject of four museum exhibitions.
Related Research Articles
Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid- to late-1950s. The movement presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular and mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane mass-produced objects. One of its aims is to use images of popular culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, or combined with unrelated material.
Robert Indiana was an American artist associated with the pop art movement.
Campbell's Soup Cans is a work of art produced between November 1961 and June 1962 by the American artist Andy Warhol. It consists of thirty-two canvases, each measuring 20 inches (51 cm) in height × 16 inches (41 cm) in width and each consisting of a painting of a Campbell's Soup can—one of each of the canned soup varieties the company offered at the time. The works were Warhol's hand-painted depictions of printed imagery deriving from commercial products and popular culture and belong to the pop art movement.
Shot Marilyns is a series of silkscreen paintings produced in 1964 by Andy Warhol, each canvas measuring 40 inches square, and each a portrait of Marilyn Monroe.
The Marilyn Diptych (1962) is a silkscreen painting by American pop artist Andy Warhol depicting Marilyn Monroe. The monumental work is one of the artist's most noted of the movie star.
Eight Elvises is a 1963 silkscreen painting by American pop artist Andy Warhol of Elvis Presley. In 2008, it was sold by Annibale Berlingieri for $100 million to a private buyer, which at the time was the most valuable work by Andy Warhol. The current owner and location of the painting, which has not been seen publicly since the 1960s, are unknown.
Thirteen Most Wanted Men was a large 1964 mural created by Andy Warhol for the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows, New York. The mural was painted over with silver paint before the fair opened, probably due to official objections, but other reasons have been suggested.
Hedy Klineman is a German-born American painter living in New York City. She has been painting for over 40 years and is known for portraits of New York celebrities and colorful works based on Asian Buddha’s and deities created with silkscreen on canvas done in a manner influenced by her friend Andy Warhol. Her paintings have been shown at Tibet House US, Patterson Museum of Contemporary Art and The New England Museum of Contemporary Art.
Steven Alan Kaufman was an American pop artist, fine artist, sculptor, stained glass artist, filmmaker, photographer and humanitarian. His entry into the world of serious pop art began in his teens when he became an assistant to Andy Warhol at The Factory studio, who nicknamed him "SAK". Kaufman eventually executed such pieces as a 144-foot-long canvas which later toured the country.
Race Riot is an 1964 acrylic and silkscreen painting by the American artist Andy Warhol that he executed in 1964. It fetched $62,885,000 at Christie's in New York on 13 May 2014.
Orange Prince(1984) is a painting by American artist Andy Warhol of Prince, the American singer, songwriter, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, actor, and director. The painting is one of twelve silkscreen portraits on canvas of Prince created by Warhol in 1984, based on an original photograph provided to Warhol by Vanity Fair. The photograph was taken by Lynn Goldsmith. These paintings and four additional works on paper are collectively known as the Prince Series. Each painting is unique and can be distinguished by colour.
Triple Elvis is a 1963 painting of Elvis Presley by the American artist Andy Warhol. The photographic image of Elvis used by Warhol as a basis for this work, taken from a publicity still from the movie Flaming Star, has become iconic and synonymous with the singer.
Revolver Gallery is a Los Angeles-based art gallery with a one-artist program focused on Andy Warhol's pop art career. With over 400 Warhols in its collection, Revolver houses the largest gallery-owned collection of Andy Warhol's artwork world-wide.
Reigning Queens is a 1985 series of silkscreen portraits by American artist Andy Warhol. The screen prints were presented as a portfolio of sixteen; four prints each of the four queens regnant. The subjects were Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Ntfombi Twala of Swaziland and Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.
Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century is a 1980 series of ten paintings by Andy Warhol. The series consists of ten silk-screened canvases, each 40 by 40 inches. Five editions of the series were made. The series was also produced by Warhol as a portfolio of screenprints on Lenox museum board comprising editions of 200, 30 Artist Proofs, 5 Printers Proofs, 3 EPs, and 25 unique Trial Proofs.
Dos Cabezas is a painting created by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982. The double portrait resulted from Basquiat's first formal meeting with his idol, American pop artist Andy Warhol.
Andy Mouse is a series of silkscreen prints created by American artist Keith Haring in 1986. The character Andy Mouse is a fusion between Disney's Mickey Mouse and Andy Warhol. The series consists of four silkscreen prints on wove paper, released in an edition of 30 per colorway, all signed and dated in pencil by Haring and Warhol.
Jean-Michel Basquiat is a painting created by American artist Andy Warhol in 1982. Warhol made multiple silkscreen portraits of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat using his "piss paintings."
Athletes is a 1977 series of silkscreen portraits by American artist Andy Warhol. Commissioned by Richard Weisman, the series consists of ten multi-colored portraits of the most celebrated athletes of the time: Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chris Evert, Rod Gilbert, O.J. Simpson, Pelé, Tom Seaver, Willie Shoemaker, Dorothy Hamill, and Jack Nicklaus.
References
↑ McKenzie, Michael. Undine: A Journal of Art and Literature. Chicago: McGraw Hill/Contemporary, 1985. Print
↑ McKenzie, Michael "Backstage at Saturday Night Live" Scholastic Paperbacks, September 1980. Print
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
