Christo vs Warhol: brilliant art and eccentric personalities

CHRISTO VS WARHOL: BRILLIANT ART AND ECCENTRIC PERSONALITIES

Kimberly and Carl Weichel, lecturers

Saturday 21 January

1.00–3.00 pm

COURSE FEES R220

This double lecture will examine the remarkable art of Christo and Jean-Claude, and Andy Warhol, delving into the psyches of these cultural icons, and discussing their eminence in the modern art world.

Christo, with his wife Jeanne-Claude, were eclectic artists renowned for wrapping landscapes and buildings in colourful fabric that turned into epic-scale environmental works. Starting in the late 1960s, their works spanned decades, across continents. Requiring complex technical solutions, they turned mountains, islands, farmlands, museums and bridges into short-lived popular art. Their expansive works were visually impressive yet controversial, often taking years of political negotiation and public persuasion. For Christo, all of this was part of the artwork: ‘For me aesthetics is everything involved in the process — the workers, the politics, the negotiations, and endless construction difficulties’.

Envisage eccentric Andy Warhol and you see Campbell soup cans, portraits of Marilyn Monroe, mind-altering videos, and gender-bending art. Everything Andy Warhol did beginning in the 1960s as portraitist, publisher, publicist or salesman, were components of one boundless work. As head of Andy Warhol Enterprises, Inc., his work was part performance art, part conceptual art, and part picture of the market world he lived in and that we still inhabit.

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Kimberly Weichel is a social entrepreneur and nonprofit leader in the fields of women's leadership, cross-cultural dialogue, citizen diplomacy, and international education, and is a published author. She has co-led courses at American University on The United Nations, The 1960s Decade, Our Hidden Brain and Exploring Our Cultural Complexities. Kim is the author of several books: Inside Crossroads (1979), Beyond Borders (2016), Our Voices Matter (2019), Uncovering New Possibilities: Insights from Our Time (2021) Kim earned a B.A. Anthropology and M.A. Sociology from UCT. www.kimweichel.org

Carl Weichel has held various positions over his career in marketing, design, and advertising in Australia, South Africa, Canada, and San Francisco. Carl has led lifelong learning courses at American University in Washington DC on Political Polarization, The 1960s Decade, Our Hidden Brain, Reviewing The NY Times Book Review, Exploring Our Cultural Complexities and David Brooks’ Writings. Carl earned a B.S. Marketing from Jacksonville University.