Warholiday
A trip to Dublin to see the best of Warhol
I’m writing this in a hotel room. The view from my room looks over the aftermath of a riot that happened a week before in Dublin’s city centre. A perfect storm of incidents and people led to an unprecedented night of violence in one of my favourite cities. The burnt out vehicles and rioters are cleared but there is still a sea of smashed up shops and a clear tension in the area. Despite recent events and concerns from family friends we kept to our travel plans.
We ventured to Dublin for several reasons - work, visiting family and for a well needed break. Topping our to-do list was to check out the Andy Warhol - Three Times Out exhibition at the Hugh Lane Gallery. I’ve been lucky to see Warhol’s work several times before, including his dedicated exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland back in 2007. This current exhibition is by far the best collection of his work I’ve seen, due to both curation of the pieces and how the gallery displayed his work. The artworks include Silver Clouds, the obvious soup cans and the usual set of pop art screen prints. However, several pieces completely stole the show: a deep dive into his childhood work (mostly pencil on paper), a look at his work on Interview magazine, several of his MTV shows played on screens, and his famous Screen Tests hung like portraits and playing simultaneously - each dedicated to a screen test with the likes of John Cale, Salvador Dali, Edie Sedgewick and more. In addition, the gallery has added areas showing work by Warhol’s friends and collaborators Peter Beard and Francis Bacon, which is a genius touch to an already awesome collection. If you can make it across then we can’t recommend the exhibition enough - it runs until January. Also let us know and we’ll supply a list of Dublin’s best bars, bookshops and places to stay.
Warhol features heavily in the Trasho Biblio library and we have tried to offer several sides to this divisive character. You can read Victor Bockris’ biography of his friend or you can switch to Warhol Superstar Ultra Violet’s takedown of Warhol in her autobiography ‘Famous for Fifteen Minutes’.
From our shelves
Wandering and living in an area that had just suffered a riot was an unwelcome feeling. Most Dubliners winced when talking about what happened and quietly advised us to not talk to anyone on our way home from nights out. The rioters were spurred on by far-right groups peddling lies and stoking culture wars for their own gain. This tale of the powerful steering the public towards hate is nothing new and sadly on the rise. Today I want to highlight a book from the collection that captures the mob mentality better than most - Gina Perry’s ‘The Lost Boys’.
The book focuses on the experiments of psychologist Muzafer Sherif who was keen to capture the flash points of prejudice and discrimination in a hope to figure out how peace can be formed. The most infamous of these experiments was Robbers Cave. Sherif worked with local schools to set up a summer camp for boys and convinced parents of its validity. However, an orchestrated Lord of the Flies situation was set up for the boys attending. They were quickly split into two groups and coaxed into bullying and harassing the opposite group until the final consequence of war. Perry takes us through Sherif’s troubled past, the history of these experiments and interviews those who took part in this ill-fated event. This is a must read from the Trasho Biblio Library (currently out on loan).
Talented People
A few events, people and things we recommend:
Glasgow’s Burning House Books have just announced their December book club pick - Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto.
The Nature Library will be displaying their collection at Take One Action Film Festival at CCA later this week.
Deeper into Movies are screening a documentary about incredible artist Jenny Holzer this week in London.
We’ll be back soon with our next update.
Trasho Biblio xxxxx