The Trip
Andy Warhol's Plastic Fantastic Cross-Country Adventure
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Strapless and Guest of Honor, a “jaunty romp through American pop-art history” (The Washington Post) about a little-known road trip Andy Warhol took in 1963, and how that journey profoundly influenced his life and art.
In 1963, up-and-coming artist Andy Warhol, along with a colorful group of friends, drove across America. What began as a madcap, drug-fueled romp became a journey that took Warhol on a kaleidoscopic adventure from New York City, across the vast American heartland, all the way to Hollywood, and back.
With locations ranging from a Texas panhandle truck stop to a Beverly Hills mansion, from the beaches of Santa Monica to a photo booth in Albuquerque, The Trip captures how Warhol intersected with Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Marcel Duchamp, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and other bold-faced names of the time. Along the way, Warhol also met rednecks, beach bums, underground filmmakers, artists, poets, socialites, and newly minted hippies—all of them leaving an indelible mark on his psyche.
In The Trip, Andy Warhol’s speeding Ford Falcon is our time machine, transporting us from the last vestiges of the sleepy Eisenhower epoch to the true beginning of the explosive, exciting sixties. Through in-depth, original research, Deborah Davis sheds new light on one of the most enduring figures in the art world and captures a fascinating moment in 1960s America—with Warhol at its center.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Davis (Guest of Honor) recounts the high-speed, cross-country car trip Warhol took from New York City to Los Angeles with three friends in 1963 to attend the opening of his first-ever solo art show. The journey itself is only part of the narrative, which spans Warhol's life and career. Davis's strength is her eye for detail, and she recreates the minutia of mid-20th-century America through descriptions of billboards, neon signs, amphetamines, cheap motels, experimental films, and wild parties. Davis's prose mirrors the zeitgeist Warhol brought to his art: bright, breezy, and easy to understand. She may not convince readers that the L.A. trip was Warhol's artistic turning point, but she immerses them in his gossipy, kitschy, crowded, materialistic, and off-kilter world. For Warhol aficionados, this book may add a few twists to familiar territory. For readers less familiar with the pop artist, it provides an entertaining and accessible introduction to his work and a beginner's guide to the social scene of the pop art world. Photos.
