There Were No Brillo Pad Boxes, Only Campbell Soup Cans

The grave of Andy Warhol, right in front of the grave of his parents.

If you happen to find yourself in the countryside outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, somewhere between Mt. Lebanon and Bethel Park, please pay your respects to the greatest American artist of the 20th Century: Andy Warhol.

I had a little spare time this afternoon visiting Western Pennsylvania and I decided to take a trip to somewhere I've wanted to visit for sometime: the grave of Andy Warhol. Andy is located in the St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery somewhere in the confluence of Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair, and Bethel Park. The grave is simple and would be easy to miss, even though the cemetery is somewhat small, except for the fact that gravesite is specifically pinpointed by google maps and, more importantly, festooned with Campbell's soup cans. No Brillo Pad boxes. No Marilyns or Maos or Jackie O's (or was she still Jackie K when Andy Warhol used her image for one of his multi-hued silk screens). Just soup.

In the future, everybody will visit the grave of Andy Warhol. For 15 minutes. I did not stay there for my full, alloted 15 minutes.

Christmas Eve in Houston: a Giant Armadillo, the Beer Can House, and the Menil

5015 Kirby Drive, just two Texas-sized blocks south of my hotel

It was a pleasant but un-busy Christmas Eve in Houston.  No stockings to hang by the chimney with care.  No hope of Saint Nicholas finding me in the Crowne Plaza River Oaks southwest of downtown Houston.  But I did find the Giant Armadillo.

There he was.  At 5015 South Kirby Drive, not too far from my hotel.  He's guarding the entrance of a Texas-themed bar restaurant called, appropriately, the Armadillo Palace.  Which was closed for Christmas already even though it was only Christmas Eve.  But the Armadillo was out there for all to see.

Next stop was lunch with the Danish student at the Galleria.  I take my camera to snap pictures of a giant armadillo, but I don't take my camera to take pictures of my Christmas lunch with the Danish student.  Weird priorities.

After a long Christmas lunch, it was time for some more sightseeing.

The famous Beer Can House, which, as you can see below, is just in ordinary blocks in an ordinary residential neighborhood.

It, of course, was closed.

Open only Saturdays and Sundays.  And I will be here neither,  The house is a basic brick and siding house, with a bunch of beer cans -- tops, bottoms and unrolled sides -- plastered or hung everywhere.

It made for a very pleasant wind chime sound when a breeze was blowing.

Beer cans everywhere.

Including fencing.

It was decorated somewhat in a grudging concession to Christmas.

A big shiny aluminum Christmas made of beer cans would have been better, but an Amen Ladder will do.

Next, was a trip to the Menil.

The Menil is a modern art gallery.  They had a Picasso, a Dali, two Warhols.  Lots of Max Ernst.  More Magritte than I've ever seen in one place anywhere (not that I've been looking).  Lots of crafts from Africa and the Americas that the sophisticates call art, even though it's the moral equivalent of Ikea or Wal-Mart wall-hangings that just happen to survive a millennium or so.  No pictures allowed inside.

I then strolled over to the nearby Rothko Chapel.

It's a small windowless octagonal building that has giant Rothko paintings hanging on each of the eight interior walls.  The Rothkos are all giant canvasses painted the same shade of navy blue.  Or it might have been black.  It was very dark.  It is supposed to be a meditative chapel.  The Rothkos were not worth building a chapel over.  There was no sign that said "no photography," but the place had that vibe, so I saved my light-pictures for the exterior.

But the reflecting pool across from the chapel entrance was nice.

On the whole of the grounds of the Menil and the Rothko, you know what I liked best?

This one awesome, giant, sprawling tree that was on the Menil grounds.

I don't know my tree varieties very well.  Is this a live oak?

Whatever.  It was more beautiful than a roomful of Magrittes and Man Rays.

Louisiana. Louisiana. They're Tryin' To Wash Us Away

Modern art. It's all about The Me

Today is the day for an out of town adventure.  But which direction?  West?  To Roskilde, with its one-of-kind (except for the one other one in Oslo, Norway) Viking Boat Museum?  Or to the village of Humlebæk, to Denmark's world famous modern art museum, the Louisiana.

Everybody I ask for an opinion speaks with one voice:  Louisiana.  Louisiana.  They're tryin' to wash us away.

So it looks like it will six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline!

Humlebæk train station

Sorry for being deliberately obscure by repeatedly referencing Randy Newman's awesome "Louisiana 1927," far and away his best song not "Short People" or "I Love L.A."  At the Copenhagen Central Station, you can buy a combined round-trip train ticket / museum admission (at the Lost & Found, weirdly enough).  You can't do that with a Viking Boat Museum.  So off to the Pelican State I head.

At the Louisiana border

Let's get the main question everyone wants answered out of the way first.  No.  I don't know why a modern art museum in rural Denmark is called the "Louisiana."  And I didn't learn the answer on this expedition.

Still outside

Did I say this was a "modern" art museum?  I'd call it more of an "ultra-modern" art museum.  Lots of pointless weirdness masquerading as art.  There is no celebration of beauty.  The skill and talent of the artist is not confined by outdated concepts of "skill" or "talent."  It's all about successfully marketing oneself as transgressive and not confined to thousands of years of art history.  My scene!

So why visit?  Three reasons.  It has a beautiful physical location alongside the Øresund, the narrow sound that connects the Baltic and North Seas.

Closer view of the Øresund

Looking out at the Øresund

Second, despite my cynicism about ultra modern art, there are some interesting pieces.  Such as these Max Ernst sculptures.

A couple of Max Ernst statues

Third, and finally, it is wonderful fun watching the people try to impose "sense" on the works they're viewing.  Let us mosey through the collection.

They had a few obscure Warhols.

They also had this black-on-black painting.  I swear I saw this very work at the Corcoran in D.C. in the 1980s.  If you stare at it long enough, a black cross emerges from the canvas.  I had to have seen it before.  How many all-black paintings of crosses can there be out there?  Well, and still have this be transgressive?

They had etchings from the artist Freud.  No.  Not Sigmund.  Lucian.  A grandchild.

His people etchings are grotesque, ugly and bordering on hideous.  On the other hand, his etchings of his dog Pluto are beautiful, evocative and lovingly done.  What they're doing in an ultra-modern art museum I haven't a clue.

And they had some interesting pre-Columbian statuary that was just like what I saw in the museums of Bogotá and Cartagena.

But as I said, I decided it was more interesting to look at the people looking at the art.

Like the Picassos.

And definitely like the Pollocks.

Ask me someday what I think of Jackson Pollock.  You will gallons of Nature's Miracle to clean up the filth I will spew.  Although, getting back to Picasso, I do subscribe to the theory that art died the day Picasso discovered the cube,

As the art got more "ultra modern," the more fun the people watching became.

The collection rotates very frequently.  So what I'm making light of today will be gone tomorrow and replaced by something even more transgressive.

It's going to get weirder as we get deeper into the art of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.  Her target audience is people who believe the art of Yoko Ono is too "Thomas Kinkade" for their tastes.

This one is called "Working on the Sea of Death."  Of course it is.

This section left me feeling like I just walked onto the set of "Laugh-In".

I half expected Jo Anne Worley to pop out of one of the balls screaming,

Or perhaps Judy Carne saying "sock it to me."  Is that too much to ask?

It was all so transgressively beautiful when I finally beheld the ultimate objet d'art in all of Louisiana,

Me.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

Looking more bored than a Warhol model at a Factory party, I am.

One more me of me, this time in a room that was more Dr. Seuss than Rowan and Martin.

So did I like any of the art at the Louisiana?  Yes.  They had Arp.

I have an art poster of an Jean Arp exhibit in D.C. from the mid 1980s.  I liked the above.

But that one was a little too turd-like for my tastes.  I liked this guy, whoever he was.

And as I said the grounds were awesome.

I did not go down the slide.  I'm not that whimsical.

So what was my favorite piece?

Joan Miró.  Personnage.  Seriously.  Surrounded by all this other ultra-modernist stuff, I can appreciate the talent, creativity and craftmanship in Miró.  That cinches it,  I am absolutely definitely going to the Joan Miró museum in Barcelona when I go there next week.

Second favorite?

This guy (or gal) guarding the exit.