The Velvet Forum

Hi, I'm a student of Art History at Glasgow University, Scotland and I'm looking into writing my dissertation on the artwork that Andy Warhol did for the Velvet Underground. This would include any advertising posters and fliers and the cover art for the album. If anybody could gig me any advice or relevant information about this topic i would be very grateful. I have recently started to manage a band "Fade" myself and am designing all of their artwork so I thought that this would make a really relevant topic for me to research. I am also a huge fan of the V.U. and of Warhol's ideas, he said some great quotes. I hope somebody out there can help.

Hi - I don't think there's really much artwork that Warhol produced for the VU apart from the banana. He's also credited with cover concept on the 2nd LP (and the tattoo is Billy Name's). Name also took the photo for the 3rd LP, but by that time Warhol was out of the picture.
Is this a 10-12,000 word MA dissertation?
If I was giving out advice I might suggest a broader view of Warhol's multi-media work between 1966-68, that included the band: the Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows, the publication of the Index book, the Dec 1966 Aspen magazine, and 'A - a Novel' all relate to this period, and good primary source material.
You should definitely get/read Popism by Warhol and Pat Hackett and Factory Made by Steven Watson for general Warhol history and Uptight (Bockris/Malanga) for VU.
see http://www.factorymade.org/fm/index.html
http://www.ubu.com/aspen/advertisements/aspen3Ad.html

I know that this isn't exactly what you were looking for, but I suggest avoiding the VU. Simon had it better when he said to focus more on Factory/EPI Era Warhol which was pretty much up until he was shot and lost faith in people. From my experience, anytime I try to write a paper on music, it never comes out as good as I would hope and I scrap it.

Thinking out loud here, and Simon?s right that there?s not much Warhol direct involvement with VU artwork. You might still be able to do something fairly substantial on VU artwork by thinking about the integrity of the artwork on the 1st three albums and how they related to Warhol in the 1st instance and the factory scene in the 2nd. It?s artwork that comes from within the family. The stuff that Simon suggests would be invaluable here. You could contrast this with the covers that follow: Loaded, Max?s, Live 1969, and also the ?Toy Soldier? cover for WLWH. I?d probably drag in the Coca-Cola cover of the two album compilation here Isn?t it a cover designed to make you think of Warhol?s art? Is there a clear division between the art/band based artwork and record company/commercial artwork? I think so. Some of these images may be as iconic as the banana, but are external and commercially projected on to the band in a way that the 1st three are not. You could go on to think about the first return of the band in VU and Another VU: both contain images that reflect back to the Warhol period, (the first of them has the more striking cover image imo). You could also pull in Songs For Drella here. Finally the whole thing comes full circle with the reunited Velvet Underground reusing the iconic banana, now silver, like Warhol?s silver factory.

thanks for your advice. I'm now thinking there might not be a new perspective that i could take on this. Would you agree that everything has already been written that could be on the topic? I'm now liking the idea of studying the psychedellic artist Wes Wilson and how he was influenced by the Vienna Seccession, Art Nouveau and drugs, it just seems to be a much broader topic, with more space to form opinions about. Thanks for all your help though, its very appreciated