Archives for April 2019

If you want something done right — or even done at all — you have to do it yourself, eh, Kathy Griffin?

“My Life on the D-List” alum Griffin, who received widespread criticism last year after posing with what appeared to be the decapitated head of President Donald Trump, said Monday that she will finance a special based on her “Laugh Your Head Off” world tour herself.

The comedian tweeted Monday that the special will be filmed at a previously announced “super secret show” in Los Angeles at the end of October in an “intimate venue” holding “less than 500 people.”

“I have some news to share…Why am I doing a super intimate show in LA? Well, I decided to bite the bullet and I’m filming my current act, the same one I’ve taken across the world, for a special. Difference is, I’m filming this on my own and with my own money. Here’s why,” Griffin wrote.

“This is not the way I want to do it. I’d rather have a deal with @Netflix @Apple @HBO, but despite the fact that I hold the Guinness Book of World Record for the most televised comedy specials, none of the companies that are in the comedy special biz have come calling,” she added.

Griffin said that, since she kicked off the tour, she’s been asked daily about when a special based on the tour would be released and added, “I want to record my act for my fans.”

Griffin went on to say, “What happened to me with the Trump photo and the story I have to tell is an important part of my history as a comic and a woman.”

The comedian noted that she’d already lined up a director for the special, tweeting, “I’m hiring my own team to film this special. It’s my experience with filming comedy specials that has led me to hire one of the best directors/producers in the business, Troy Miller of @DakotaFilms. He and his team will film this special for me and my production company.”

As for where and when the special will be released, Griffin acknowledged, “I don’t know,” adding, “I don’t just want to put it on YouTube.”

She explained, “It may sit in a climate controlled vault for a while but maybe I’ll get lucky and get discovered by a 28-year-old gay executive at one of the networks. Who knows! Regardless, I want to thank all my fans for their love and support. For buying tickets and buying merch.”

Griffin suffered significant career fallout when the photo was released last year, including the loss of her gig as co-host of CNN’s annual New Year’s Eve coverage.

The comedian also said she had been the subject of a Secret Service investigation because of the photo.

Read Griffin’s announcement below.

A) I have some news to share…Why am I doing a super intimate show in LA? Well, I decided to bite the bullet and I’m filming my current act, the same one I’ve taken across the world, for a special. Difference is, I’m filming this on my own and with my own money. Here’s why.. https://t.co/IPCMLZ0Qp2

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

B) This is not the way I want to do it. I’d rather have a deal with @Netflix@Apple@HBO, but despite the fact that I hold the Guinness Book of World Record for the most televised comedy specials, none of the companies that are in the comedy special biz have come calling. pic.twitter.com/Mm0dIqtPH9

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

C) Since I launched my world tour last year, and especially as I’ve done sold-out appearances in the US and Canada, there’s not a day that goes by where a fan doesn’t ask me when I’m releasing a special based on the Laugh Your Head Off Tour. I want to record my act for my fans

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

D) What happened to me with the Trump photo and the story I have to tell is an important part of my history as a comic and a woman.

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

G) So I’m hiring my own team to film this special. It’s my experience with filming comedy specials that has led me to hire one of the best directors/producers in the business, Troy Miller of @DakotaFilms. He and his team will film this special for me and my production company.

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

H) This ain’t gonna be cheap honey. And as I said, I’d rather do this with one of the big companies, but there’s a reason I’ve busted my ass and saved my money for the past 30 years…so I can take risks like this.

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

I) Where and when will this special be released? I don’t know. One of the things women don’t talk about enough is what they’re worth and what they get paid, I’ve put a lot into this act and dealt with a lot putting it together. I don’t want to just put it on Youtube.

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

J) I believe I deserve to get paid for my work just like all the male comics do. Many of the networks/streaming services like Netflix base their acquisition decisions on ticket sales. Well there’s no doubt I’ve given them the numbers they really, really want on this tour.

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

K) Comics with 1/4th of my sales get specials. So I feel I deserved to get paid appropriately for my work. But i’m filming this special at my own expense to preserve it.

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

L) It may sit in a climate controlled vault for a while but maybe I’ll get lucky and get discovered by a 28-year-old gay executive at one of the networks. Who knows! Regardless, I want to thank all my fans for their love and support. For buying tickets and buying merch..

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

M) For defending me when it wasn’t easy…I am filled with gratitude and i hope I’ve repaid you with laughter during your happiest times and most difficult times. Yes, I’m filming this special in-part for myself. But a big reason I’m filming it is for all of you.

XOXO
KG

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

N) For those of you who are interested in my special, especially those of you who are saying you want to pre-order or want me to sell it directly, PLEASE join my mailing list ASAP (fill out all fields) so I can let you know what I’m going to do with it! https://t.co/JwPYDCdWvh

– Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) October 1, 2018

One would not necessarily think that the mysterious street artist Banksy and the esteemed figurative painter Malcolm Morley would have much in common, but it turns out they do: Banksy’s recent auction stunt at Sotheby’s in London—the shredding of his painting just as it sold for $1.4 million—was directly in the lineage of a prank that Morley pulled off almost half a century earlier, in 1974, when he attacked one of his own paintings as it came up for auction in Paris.

Collector Andy Hall recalled the incident at Morley’s memorial earlier this month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (the artist passed away in June at the age of 86):

In 1974 one of Malcolm’s paintings came up for auction in Paris. The work was called Buckingham Palace with First Prize which he had painted in 1970 immediately after completing Race Track. This work depicted a banal post card image of Buckingham Palace with some kitschy municipal flower beds in the foreground. It had been commissioned as part of a group of artworks by an association of florists. Malcolm had ironically subverted the painting by the Duchampian addition of a mass-produced rosette—the type doled out as prizes in flower arrangement competitions—which he had attached to the bottom left of the painting.

As chance had it, Malcolm was in Paris at the time of the auction for the opening of an exhibition of his paintings at a commercial gallery. Malcolm put out the word that something would happen at the auction. On the evening of the sale Malcolm turned up at the auction house in a tuxedo bearing a water pistol full of purple ink. His plan was to spray the word “faux” (or fake) on the painting. The auction house, however, had gotten wind of the mischief and had covered the painting with a thin sheet of plastic, thus thwarting Malcolm’s plans. As the auction house porters tried to hustle the painting out of the auction room Malcolm rushed forward and, while shouting “Laundry Money,” nailed the loaded water pistol to the top right corner of the painting where it remains to this day, along with traces of purple ink, as part of the now modified work which was acquired by the Centre Pompidou in 2004. So, when Banksy captured headlines a couple of weeks ago it was for deploying a strategy not so different from that utilized by Malcolm some 40 years earlier.

There are, of course, differences. In Morley’s case, the Parisian auction house, Palais Galliera, had been tipped off before the painting came up for sale on November 30, 1974, and it took measures to protect the painting. (That said, some people believe that Sotheby’s was aware of the Banksy stunt in advance, despite its repeated denials.) But there are also similarities, of a sort: like Banksy’s “new work” that resulted from the shredding, Morley’s piece seems to have gained value from its play-acted defacement, having eventually ended up in a prestigious museum. It came up for auction again in 2004, at Christie’s London, and was bought by the Centre Pompidou, the modern and contemporary art museum in Paris for GDP 341,250, about $650,000 at the time.

Here’s Morley describing the incident to interviewer David Ebony in 2011:

EBONY: Early on in your career, you became known for some provocative incidents, like when you attacked a painting of yours at an auction as it came up for sale.

MORLEY: That was at an auction in Paris. It was a painting of Buckingham Palace I did in 1970 that had been commissioned by the flower company F.T.D. [Buckingham Palace with First Prize]. There were a number of artists also commissioned, and I decided to give myself first prize, and stuck the ribbon in the corner. Around that time I was very taken in by Artaud and when the painting came up for auction a few years later, I developed a performance piece. I asked friends to come to the auction, and let them know that I was going to do this event and maybe shoot paint at the canvas with a water pistol. The auction house was tipped off about it and when the painting came out they had it covered in plastic. I was dressed in a tuxedo with long tails. I had hired a violin player. She started playing and I spouted off a speech I wrote about how God means the painting not to be a fake, or something like that. I went up to the painting and nailed the water pistol onto the canvas. The audience was beside itself, shouting and laughing, and the auctioneer stopped the sale. The painting was eventually bought by a Swedish collector, and now it’s in the Pompidou collection—with the water pistol still attached. 

According to Morley’s studio, not only did he attempt to spray the ink-filled water gun at the painting but he also handed out chocolates and planted people in the audience (shades of Banksy’s remote-control controller!) to stand up and shout “don’t be afraid.” He may even have used the auctioneer’s gavel to hammer the pistol to the painting.

One thing that can be said without question is that both artists have a sense of humor.

Writing for ARTnews in 2015, painter David Salle observed that before hitting a eureka moment in the early 1980s with his painting Cradle of Civilization with American Woman, Morley “had been working for years to find a way to translate his fracturing, shattering, and disjunctive impulses into paint. In Cradle the transgressive id runs riot; the picture is a gas.” In a review of Morley’s recent, posthumous exhibition at his longtime New York gallery Sperone Westwater, New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl characterized the artist as “fun though somewhat alarming company,” and stressed the need for a proper Morley retrospective in the U.S., writing, “I fancy one that would focus on the onsets of Morley’s stylistic convulsions . . . to emphasize the demonic restlessness of his sensibility.”

Here’s to the transgressive id, may all of ours outlive us.