Warhol Muse and Beat Poet Taylor Mead Dies at 88: VIDEO

Beat poet, actor, and Warhol friend Taylor Mead died on Wednesday in Colorado at the age of 88.

The film critic J. Hoberman called Mr. Mead “the first underground movie star.” The film historian P. Adams Sitney called one of Mr. Mead’s earliest films, “The Flower Thief” (1960), “the purest expression of the Beat sensibility in cinema.”

“The Flower Thief,” directed by Ron Rice, stars Mr. Mead as a bedraggled mystic wandering the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco with open-mouthed wonder. He carries with him his three prized possessions: a stolen gardenia, an American flag and a teddy bear.

Check out the following clip shot by Craig Highberger in which Mead talks about Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn, Max's Kansas City and getting beat up (and rejected by the hospital) for being gay in the 60's.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

'Dust' and a Warhol Superstar: VIDEO

Not a lot of information on plot from the first trailer for Dust, the debut feature film from Adam Dugas & Fischerspooner's Casey Spooner, but it does feature a lot of color and a cameo by Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Andy Warhol Monument to be Unveiled in NYC's Union Square Today

Visual artist Rob Pruitt will be unveiling "The Andy Monument", a statue commemorating pop artist and icon Andy Warhol, today at 6 pm in NYC's Union Square.

The NY Post:

The statue’s surface is finished in chrome, and at a Connecticut factory yesterday, it was mounted atop a concrete pedestal before being transported by train to New York in time for today’s unveiling. The statue will be displayed at a street corner where Warhol, who died in 1987 at age 58, regularly stood and handed out copies of his brainchild, Interview magazine. The monument features the icon with a Polaroid camera around his neck and holding a Bloomingdale's bag in his right hand because Warhol, said Pruitt, regularly carried a shopping bag filled with copies of the magazine and candy.

Rob Pruitt, the monument's creator writes, on the event Facebook page:

'You know the song "New York, New York," and how for year after year people have come to New York to "make it." One of the most important examples of that is Andy Warhol, who spawned a generation of people who think they can make it here in this city. Andy Warhol embodies the spirit of the city that still draws people. Every day a thousand more kids come to New York propelled by his legacy. And even if the decades pass and Warhol becomes a vaguer and vaguer character, there will still be something here that's directly linked to him - this pilgrimage, or calling, coming here from the Midwest, Eastern Europe or South- East Asia, to make it big, to be an artist. I think there should be a destination in New York to mark all those journeys. 

There are hundreds of monuments to politicians in the New York City, but I can’t think of any monuments to artists, and other figures who actually represent the lived experience of most of the people who live here. When I was a teenager, I visited Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried. I was struck by the throngs of people that came to visit the tombs of their idols. When Andy Warhol died, his family had his remains sent back to Pittsburgh, where he was born, and so no such marker for him exists in New York. So a public statue of Warhol has a sense of righting a wrong. 

Andy, like so many other artists and performers and people who don’t fit in, moved to New York to be himself, fulfill his dreams and make it big. That’s why I moved here, and that’s what my Andy Monument is about. Of course it could be argued that someone could just go to the Modern and look at his Soup Cans, but I think there is something to being truly out in streets of New York, to have something you can visit at 4:20 in the morning with your friends. 

I will be unveiling the Andy Monument at the North-West corner of Union Square on Wednesday, March 30 at 6:00PM. I hope you will be able to join me to celebrate one of our own. ' 

See a full-length rendition of the monument, AFTER THE JUMP...

Warhol Foundation Threatens to Pull Funding from Smithsonian Unless it Restores Censored Wojnarowicz Video

The Warhol Foundation today threatened to stop funding exhibits at the Smithsonian unless it restores the David Wojnarowicz video piece "A Fire in the Belly" to the National Portrait Gallery's Hide/Seek exhibit. The Smithsonian, as you may know, pulled the Wojnarowicz piece from the exhibit after complaints from the Catholic League that the video, which depicts ants on a crucifix and memorializes the death of Wojnarowicz's lover from AIDS. 

Wrote the Warhol Foundation in a letter:

Mr. Wayne Clough
Smithsonian Institution
SIB Office of the Secretary
MRC 016
PO Box 37012
Washington, D.C. 20013-7012

Dear Mr. Clough,

The Warhol Foundation is proud to have been a lead supporter of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, but we strongly condemn the decision to remove David Wojnarowicz’s video A Fire in My Belly from the exhibition. Such blatant censorship is unconscionable. It is inimical to everything the Smithsonian Institution should stand for, and everything the Andy Warhol Foundation does stand for.

Although we have enjoyed our growing relationship during the past three years, and have given more than $375,000 to fund several exhibitions at various Smithsonian institutions, we cannot stand by and watch the Smithsonian bow to the demands of bigots who have attacked the exhibition out of ignorance, hatred and fear.

Last week the Foundation published a statement on its website www.warholfoundation.org, condemning the National Portrait Gallery’s removal of the work and on Friday our Board of Directors met to discuss the long-term implications of the Museum’s behavior on the Foundation’s relationship with the Smithsonian Institution. After careful consideration, the Board voted unanimously to demand that you restore the censored work immediately, or the Warhol Foundation will cease funding future exhibitions at all Smithsonian institutions.

I regret that you have put us in this position, but there is no other course we can take. For the arts to flourish the arts must be free, and the decision to censor this important work is in stark opposition to our mission to defend freedom of expression wherever and whenever it is under attack.

Sincerely yours,

Joel Wachs
President

It's good that folks are finally taking action over this shameful censorship.

Also, Tyler Green reports that National Portrait Gallery commissioner James Bartlett has resigned in protest:

"Bartlett is the former board president of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The commission functions as a kind of board of directors for the gallery."

Previously...
Frank Rich Bashes The Smithsonian Over Censorship [tr]
Watch: Activist Banned for Life from Smithsonian for iPad Protest [tr] 
National Portrait Gallery Censors AIDS Artwork [tr]

Towleroad Guide to the Tube #774

HOLLY WOODLAWN: James St. James interviews the Warhol superstar.

SEGWAYS: Members of the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom band do the "Waltz of the Flowers" in Golden Gate Park.

QUARTERBACK TRICK: Play of the week from Driscoll Middle School in Corpus Christi, Texas.

GOTTA HOOP: Darkness descends on L.A. and the hula hoops come out.

For recent Guides to the Tube, click HERE.

News: Crater, Chelsea Clinton, Wikileaks, Sonoma County, Alcide

Wikileaks releases damning set of documents on Afghanistan, revealing Pakistani aid to insurgency.

Zachary Quinto rehearses for the revival of Angels in America in NYC.

Kings of Leon driven from concert by pigeon poop.

Pope Benedict has written a children's book called The Friends of Jesus.

President Obama to appear on The View on Wednesday: "The president will take the hot seat among the show's five female hosts, who represent a range of backgrounds and political views, at a time when his administration grapples with challenges from the economy to the BP oil spill."

UVA study: Positive development of adoptive children not related to sexual orientation of parents. "We found that children adopted by lesbian and gay couples are thriving."

Chelsea Clinton wedding price tag could top $2 million: "Smart money has the ClintVinskys tying the knot on the grounds of Astor Courts, a private, Versailles-inspired Beaux-Arts mansion on 50 acres overlooking the Hudson in Rhinebeck. The rehearsal dinner is said to be at a stone barn at nearby Grasmere, a 525-acre Revolutionary-era estate. Only those personally close to the bride or groom made it onto a tightly-held list that reportedly contains 400 to 500 names, more about which later."

What in the world has Eric McCormack been up to?

Best-preserved meteor crater in the world found via Google Earth.

Matt Rettenmund visits Andy Warhol: The Last Decade at the Brooklyn Museum.

Clean-up crews finding less surface oil in Gulf.

 "Reading on the toilet" is James Franco's favorite guy ritual.

Sonoma County settles out of court with Clay Green: "Their nightmare began only two years ago, and no one can undue the psychological damage done to Clay Green and Harold Scull or return to the surviving spouse the home and virtually all the property and personal possessions the two men had shared for 20 years, but their injuries have finally been acknowledged. Last Friday, just two days before his suit would have been opened in court, California's Sonoma County, agreed to a settle Greene's complaint out of court, for the amount of $653,000. Greene will retain $275,000, his lawyers will take $300,000*, and Scull's estate will be given the remainder. It was announced in the San Francisco Chronicle that the nursing home will pay $53,000, but it was not made clear where it will end up."

First look: Chris Evans as Captain America.

 Male model fix: Jamie Jewitt.

Direct action and political protest hashed out at Netroots Nation.

Alcide at Comic-Con.

The Kids Are All Right is this summer's sleeper hit: "When the film opened three weeks ago on seven screens, per-theater ticket sales averaged $72,127, the highest for any movie this year. This weekend, after growing from 35 to 201 venues, 'The Kids' continued its winning streak, generating more than $2.6 million (with another robust per-theater average of $13,173, the best of any film in release), bringing its cumulative box-office to just under $5 million."

Diane von Furstenburg has designed a "Team Pelosi" tote bag.

Michelle Rodriguez, on why the strong female characters she plays always get killed: Because I don't take my clothes off, and I'm nobody's girlfriend. The writers are new to the whole tough girl thing, and they don't know what to do with [me]. We've got the dude who's strong, so what do we do with the chick who's strong? We kill her."