Two weeks before the opening of Tate Britain's 'Pop Life' exhibition featuring the work of, among others, the 'Pope of Pop' himself, Andy Warhol, a curious item appeared in the Guardian under the banner: 'Pope seeks to frame new relationship with artists.' Reading more like the kind of small ad that usually appears in the personal columns rather than in the editorial pages, it was actually a report about a new initiative launched by the Vatican to forge 'a new and fertile alliance between art and faith' to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's 'Letter to Artists' and the 45th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's original initiative in setting up the Vatican Museum's modern religious and contemporary art collection in 1973.
The collection includes works by Auguste Rodin, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. Warhol's work is conspicuous by its absence, despite his having been a good Catholic boy who attended mass regularly until his death, and despite his own efforts, recorded in his Diary, to secure a commission to make a portrait of Pope John Paul II. In one entry he notes: 'Hermann-the-German said he's 90% sure that he has the pope for me to do. And the other night at a party Mario D'Urso said, "I've been working on getting the pope for you".' But it was not to be. He and his business manager, Fred Hughes, did eventually secure a brief audience with the Pope in 1980, but there was no private sitting. Instead Warhol had to content himself with silk-screening a found image of the pontiff.
Warhol was not without fans in the church hierarchy, however, as he gleefully reported in his Diary the following year. As a guest of the now disgraced media tycoon, Conrad Black, Warhol had been introduced to a real live cardinal (or rather half of him', since he'd recently suffered a stroke) who remarked that he'd heard that the artist had a nephew who was a priest to which Warhol replied, Oh yes, but he just ran away with a Mexican nun'. Hughes, who was with him, was horrified, but to his credit, the cardinal told him that he admired Warhol's honesty, adding: 'And I love his art and I know he goes to church every Sunday.'
Ironically, the Vatican's wish list now includes Warhol's name, along with those of other 'great 20th-century American artists' such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt and Clifford Still, as well as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, whose inclusion is interesting, given the Vatican's position on homosexuality and the hardline views of the present pope, Benedict XVI, himself. Acknowledging that works by these artists might be hard to come by, it lists other artists, among them Dan Flavin and, surprisingly, Carl Andre, Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra, as well as that perennial favourite of religious institutions, Bill Viola (see Artnotes).
Had Warhol been alive, he would have relished an invitation to attend the meeting with the Pope that will take place in the Sistine Chapel on 21 November. Five hundred artists from all fields, including music, architecture, design and the visual arts have been invited, regardless of political or religious affiliation. So far 75 have accepted, among them the composer Ennio Morricone, forever associated with Sergio Leone's westerns featuring Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name. Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums, hopes that the new initiative will mark 'a reconciliation after the great divorce', a strange choice of words, given the Vatican's views on marriage. Among the artworks that have 'soured relations' between the Vatican and the contemporary art world are Martin Kippenberger's crucified frog, which led to the sacking of the director, Corinne Diserens, when it was exhibited in Bolzano, and Paolo Schmidlin's Miss Kitty, 2006, a sculpture which portrays the pope semi-naked and in drag, and which was withdrawn from an exhibition in Milan following protests from the Catholic Anti-Defamation League.
During the 1990 Venice Biennale, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) exhibited a billboard depicting a 2ft-high erect penis next to an image of the Pope, drawing furious protest from the Vatican. To counter this 'blasphemous' trend in art, the Vatican also announced earlier this year that it will set up its own national pavilion for the 2011 Biennale where it will stage an exhibition of its preferred art. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and apparently no fan of Warhol's, would not say who would be included but singled out the work of Jannis Kounellis, Anish Kapoor and, inevitably, Viola.
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The collection includes works by Auguste Rodin, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. Warhol's work is conspicuous by its absence, despite his having been a good Catholic boy who attended mass regularly until his death, and despite his own efforts, recorded in his Diary, to secure a commission to make a portrait of Pope John Paul II. In one entry he notes: 'Hermann-the-German said he's 90% sure that he has the pope for me to do. And the other night at a party Mario D'Urso said, "I've been working on getting the pope for you".' But it was not to be. He and his business manager, Fred Hughes, did eventually secure a brief audience with the Pope in 1980, but there was no private sitting. Instead Warhol had to content himself with silk-screening a found image of the pontiff.
Warhol was not without fans in the church hierarchy, however, as he gleefully reported in his Diary the following year. As a guest of the now disgraced media tycoon, Conrad Black, Warhol had been introduced to a real live cardinal (or rather half of him', since he'd recently suffered a stroke) who remarked that he'd heard that the artist had a nephew who was a priest to which Warhol replied, Oh yes, but he just ran away with a Mexican nun'. Hughes, who was with him, was horrified, but to his credit, the cardinal told him that he admired Warhol's honesty, adding: 'And I love his art and I know he goes to church every Sunday.'
Ironically, the Vatican's wish list now includes Warhol's name, along with those of other 'great 20th-century American artists' such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt and Clifford Still, as well as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, whose inclusion is interesting, given the Vatican's position on homosexuality and the hardline views of the present pope, Benedict XVI, himself. Acknowledging that works by these artists might be hard to come by, it lists other artists, among them Dan Flavin and, surprisingly, Carl Andre, Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra, as well as that perennial favourite of religious institutions, Bill Viola (see Artnotes).
Had Warhol been alive, he would have relished an invitation to attend the meeting with the Pope that will take place in the Sistine Chapel on 21 November. Five hundred artists from all fields, including music, architecture, design and the visual arts have been invited, regardless of political or religious affiliation. So far 75 have accepted, among them the composer Ennio Morricone, forever associated with Sergio Leone's westerns featuring Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name. Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums, hopes that the new initiative will mark 'a reconciliation after the great divorce', a strange choice of words, given the Vatican's views on marriage. Among the artworks that have 'soured relations' between the Vatican and the contemporary art world are Martin Kippenberger's crucified frog, which led to the sacking of the director, Corinne Diserens, when it was exhibited in Bolzano, and Paolo Schmidlin's Miss Kitty, 2006, a sculpture which portrays the pope semi-naked and in drag, and which was withdrawn from an exhibition in Milan following protests from the Catholic Anti-Defamation League.
During the 1990 Venice Biennale, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) exhibited a billboard depicting a 2ft-high erect penis next to an image of the Pope, drawing furious protest from the Vatican. To counter this 'blasphemous' trend in art, the Vatican also announced earlier this year that it will set up its own national pavilion for the 2011 Biennale where it will stage an exhibition of its preferred art. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, and apparently no fan of Warhol's, would not say who would be included but singled out the work of Jannis Kounellis, Anish Kapoor and, inevitably, Viola.
Source : www.findarticles.com
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