Rejecting Andy Warhol
August 18, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, andy warhol, art, rejection, rejection lettersFrom Douglas Wilson, On Paper Wings:
Need more proof that committees get nothing done right? The Museum of Modern Art sent this letter to Andy Warhol in 1956 rejecting his gift of one of his early drawings. I am guessing they have regretted this decision for at least 40 years…
(Click for a larger version: andy-warhol-rejection-letter.jpg)
August 18th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
You know what they say, all (well, most, or at least a solid majority) of genius is misunderstood…
But the little-known second half of that saying goes like this: “…until the genius has made it big in the real world and then the ungrateful misunderstanders spend the rest of their lives wallowing in the regret of not capitalizing on such a great guy.”
P.S.- Andy’s my favorite!
August 18th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
“Eh, this Warhol guy is never going to amount to anything …”
August 19th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
James: Ah, it is truly a beautiful come-uppance, is it not?
Mini Betsy – Being a genius pretty often means being a freak! The problem is, the rest of the world generally does not consist of geniuses, and as it’s generally a majority-rule type deal, freakiness — aka Andy Warhol’s mould-breaking art — is (also generally) Frowned Upon.
I think Marilynn Robinson (click here!) captures the real problem very well in her nuanced and careful essay “The Tyranny of Petty Coercion” — in which she points out that 21st century Americans are *most definitely* not immune to the crushing power of social consensus.
If there were anything in the world that I’d be willing to actually take up arms about, it might be to protect gorgeous young individualists like you from that tyranny. Probably wouldn’t help anything, though.
The best response is exactly yours… hang in there and make it big! Success is the best revenge of all!!
August 19th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
The better you are at something, the fewer people notice.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Here is perhaps an even more flagrant rejection of Warhol. Picture this: my family is in Washington touring the Corcoran, which has a HUGE Warhol exhibit going on in its main gallery. Husband and I are awestruck; teenager, however, decides to sit on a bench in the midst of all this and TEXT HIS FRIENDS. Part of this rejection, in fairness, is the boy’s personality; he will reject darn near ANYTHING that his parents endorse (he even did this before he was a teenager). But still. Warhol. The Corcoran.
I have a pair of Warhol portraits of Rudolph Nureyev hanging above my desk at the ballet school. I have a love/hate relationship with those portraits, which were a sweet gift from my husband. On the one hand, I love Warhol because he was just so dang weird and brilliant. On the other hand, I hate Nureyev because he was an egomaniac and horribly rude to me the one time I met him.
Anyway, I like Twyla Tharp’s approach to this kind of rejection, and that is to embrace it: frame those letters and hang them as art. (Still, there is something particularly insidious about rejection by committee….)
August 19th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Alas, Yep, I feel you are too often correct. Part of the “you make it look too easy” phenomenon, perhaps.
@ALTOS: Warhol plus the Corcoran. How ironic that this combo both legitimizes and de-freaks Warhol, thereby almost becoming the kind of social coercion that Warhol — and now your son — resists. Maddening, yet admirable in its own way. I wonder if if your son’s texting (okay, maybe another kind of mainstreaming activity in a teenager’s world) might just have made Warhol himself giggle to see?
Now, Warhol plus a despicable ballet star plus a person who loves/hates the combination. THAT sounds properly freaky, indeed!
August 21st, 2008 at 1:02 am
The total number of words in all the rejection slips I’m collecting for my novel “Bird’s Nest In Your Hair” (www.korrektiv.org) are coming dangerously close to the number of words in the novel.
“Yep” has comforted me greatly.
Apologies for the plugs.
Thanks!
October 14th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Most really successful people fail miserably before their Grand Success. He was freaky for his time but he had a friend that got in at the museum and he rode in on his coattails. Goes to show the rest of us not to give up, don’t be vain and accept help from friends when ever possible.
By the way i have a copy of the letter too.It’s on a transparent vellum paper and the ink is black. Think people! In 1956 the typewriters would have punctured that paper and they had ditto machines and the ink was purple.
I bought my daughter an Andy Warhol purse from Ross and it came with it.
It’s a copy of the original the is in the archive in Pittsburgh, PA.