Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one the most important 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, sculpture, photography, and filmmaking. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
Kitsch is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal taste.
Clement Greenberg, occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formalist aesthetician. He is best remembered for his association with the art movement abstract expressionism and the painter Jackson Pollock.
Odd Nerdrum is a Norwegian figurative painter who was born in Sweden; his work is held by museums worldwide. Themes and style in Nerdrum's work reference anecdote and narrative. Primary influences by the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio help place his work in direct conflict with the abstraction and conceptual art considered acceptable in much of Norway. Nerdrum creates six to eight paintings a year. They include still life paintings of small, everyday objects, portraits and self-portraits, and large paintings allegorical and apocalyptic in nature. The figures in Nerdrum's paintings are often dressed as if from another time and place.
Alannah Myles is a Canadian singer-songwriter who has won both a Grammy and a Juno Award for the song "Black Velvet". The song was a top-ten hit in Canada and a number one hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1990.
Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff was an artist whose painting Chinese Girl, popularly known as The Green Lady, is one of the best-selling art prints of the twentieth century.
The Elvis-A-Rama Museum in Paradise, Nevada was a large private collection of Elvis memorabilia owned by Chris Davidson which featured an 85-foot-long (26 m) mural about Elvis' life and career. The museum opened on November 5, 1999, and showcased more than $5,000,000 worth of Elvis' vehicles, jumpsuits, guitars and other memorabilia. The museum was housed in an 8,200 sq ft (760 m2) building that contained the museum, 100 person showroom and extensive gift shop. All the showcases of Elvis's belongings were enhanced with murals by renowned artist Robert Emerald Shappy. Over thirty paintings were created by Shappy for both the museums in Nevada. The artwork was valued by Davidson at $250,000. A break-in occurred at the museum on March 17, 2004, with almost $300,000 worth of memorabilia stolen including Elvis' jewelry and a .38 special handgun. The stolen items were recovered on November 3, 2005, with the assistance of Duke Adams, an Elvis impersonator who was approached by Eliab Aguilar, who was subsequently arrested by Las Vegas Metro for the robbery. The museum was located at 3401 Industrial Road.
"Black Velvet" is a song written by Canadian songwriters Christopher Ward and David Tyson, and recorded by Canadian singer-songwriter Alannah Myles. It was released as one of four singles from Myles' 1989 eponymous album from Atlantic Records. It became a number-one hit for two weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1990 and reached number one on the Album Rock Tracks chart, as well as number ten in her native Canada and number two on the UK Singles Chart. The power ballad also reached number one in Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland and was a major success in several other countries. It contains blues verses with a rock chorus.
Edgar William Leeteg was an American painter often considered the father of American velvet painting. He immigrated to French Polynesia in 1933, where he spent the rest of his life painting the local life on black velvet.
The Museum of Particularly Bad Art Exhibition (MOPBA) is an annual event held on Chapel Street, Melbourne, Australia celebrating poor art forms, primarily in the forms of paintings and sketches. MOPBA relies on a core group of art pieces owned by Helen Round but the public are invited to enter pieces that are their own or that have been found that are considered poor. The event primarily is a charity event that funds three charities within the Stonnington area.
Slap! is the fourth studio album by anarchist punk band Chumbawamba. A radical redefinition of the band's sound and attitude, the songs now inspires dancing more than moshing, and the lyrics are celebratory as opposed to victimist. The cover art is the popular kitsch painting Chinese Girl (1952) by Vladimir Tretchikoff.
A velvet painting is a type of painting distinguished by the use of velvet as the support, in place of canvas, paper, or similar materials. The velvet provides an especially dark background against which colors stand out.
Red Jacket is a 1998 documentary film about the life of the world's best-selling artist, Vladimir Tretchikoff. The film was produced by Technitronics and televised by the SABC.
Sima Urale is a New Zealand filmmaker. Her films explore social and political issues and have been screened worldwide. She is one of the few Polynesian film directors in the world with more than 15 years in the industry. Her accolades include the Silver Lion for Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival for O Tamaiti (1996).
Bigger and Blackerer is a 2010 album and DVD by American stand-up comedian David Cross. The album's title plays on Chris Rock's comedy album, Bigger & Blacker, and the cover plays off of the popular art form of painting on black velvet, such as Velvet Elvis. Cross taped and recorded the album during two shows at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston.
Velveteria: The Museum of Velvet Art was a museum dedicated to paintings on velvet.established in 2005 in Portland Oregon and relocated in 2013 to Los Angeles, California. In Los Angeles it was formally known as Velveteria Epicenter of Art Fighting Cultural Deprivation. The establishment housed hundreds of paintings from founders Caren Anderson and Carl Baldwin's personal collection of over 2,000 pieces, and was reportedly the only one of its kind. The Velveteria closed in Portland in January 2010 due to financial difficulties and the couple's relocation to Southern California. It was reopened in Chinatown, Los Angeles in 2013. It was permanently closed c. 2020-2021 during the COVID pandemic.
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.
The Savior of Painting is a 1997 painting by the Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum. It is also known as Self-Portrait as the Prophet of Painting. It depicts Nerdrum in a golden robe, standing barefoot under the evening sky, with a paintbrush in his right hand and a palette in his left.
Velvet Buzzsaw is a 2019 American satirical black comedy horror film directed and written by Dan Gilroy and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Zawe Ashton, Rene Russo, Toni Collette, Daveed Diggs, Tom Sturridge, Natalia Dyer, Billy Magnussen, and John Malkovich. The film had its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 27.
