美国国家公共电台 NPR Newly Discovered Andy Warhol Art Up For Auction

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There's some newly discovered artworks up for auction¹ this weekend in Massachusetts. They're by Andy Warhol, who died more than three decades ago. We don't know how much the works are worth until they sell, but we do know their value to Andy Warhol and to the man to whom he originally gave them. Member station WBUR's Maria Garcia has the story.

MARIA GARCIA, BYLINE²: At McInnis Auctioneers' big showroom, auction director Dan Meader stands in front of dozens of Andy Warhol works. They range from a silkscreen of a New York Post cover on aluminum³ sheeting to male body sketches⁴ and stitched photo collages⁵. But Meader thinks the most important piece is a work he's calling "Abstraction." It's the corner of a stretched canvas that's been broken, reshaped into a sculpture and painted with streaks⁶ of red, yellow and periwinkle blue. It was a gift from Warhol to Jon Gould.

DAN MEADER: He presented it to Jon and gave it to him in 1983. So you look at this, and you think of what's going through Andy's mind at this point in their relationship.

GARCIA: Meader discovered the art when he was hired to go through the estate of Jon's mother, Harriett Gould. Jon Gould and Andy Warhol met in 1980. Gould was a 27-year-old movie executive living in Los Angeles as a straight man. Warhol was 51, an emblematic⁷ figure of queer identity in New York. Biographies of Warhol show he tried to impress Gould with glamorous⁸ outings at Studio 54 and expensive gifts, including a Rolex watch. Tom Sokolowski is the former director of the Andy Warhol Museum.

TOM SOKOLOWSKI: He was not someone who gave presents to people because he was a working-class guy from Depression-era Pittsburgh, and he really believed in hard work. But he would say in his diaries things like - oh, what can I give Jon to make him like me more?

GARCIA: Gould moved into Warhol's New York apartment. He told people the two didn't have sex. But Warhol was clearly obsessed⁹ with Gould. He took more photos of Gould than anyone else - by the thousands - Gould smiling, tanning at the beach, working out in Central Park.

SOKOLOWSKI: He was feeling, you know, like the ugly duckling that he always referred to himself as. And then here was this young man who was interested in him and was just everything that Andy wanted to be, in a sense.

GARCIA: In 1984, Jon Gould was hospitalized and diagnosed with AIDS. Eventually, Gould moved back to Los Angeles and stopped speaking to Warhol. He died in September of 1986. Scholars think Gould's death deeply inspired Warhol's later work - paintings of attractive male figures or collages with the term, the big C, referring to gay cancer.

Here's Jessica Beck, a curator at the Andy Warhol Museum.

JESSICA BECK: It brings to light that he was a person in love and fearful, just like many people were in the '80s, at a time when, you know, it was mass epidemic¹⁰ happening across the U.S.

GARCIA: Warhol died six months after Gould of complications from gallbladder surgery.

Back at the auction house, the Warhol art is ready to be bought by collectors, its value deepened by the story of two men in love at the end of their lives.

For NPR News, I'm Maria Garcia.

1 auction   

n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖

参考例句：

• They've put the contents of their house up for auction.他们把房子里的东西全都拿去拍卖了。
• They bought a new minibus with the proceeds from the auction.他们用拍卖得来的钱买了一辆新面包车。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 aluminum   

n.(aluminium)铝

参考例句：

• The aluminum sheets cannot be too much thicker than 0.04 inches.铝板厚度不能超过0.04英寸。
• During the launch phase,it would ride in a protective aluminum shell.在发射阶段，它盛在一只保护的铝壳里。

4 sketches   

n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概

参考例句：

• The artist is making sketches for his next painting. 画家正为他的下一幅作品画素描。
• You have to admit that these sketches are true to life. 你得承认这些素描很逼真。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 collages   

n.拼贴画( collage的名词复数 )；杂烩

参考例句：

• My work includes mixed media, paintings and digital collages. 我的工作包括混合媒介，绘画和数码拼贴。 来自互联网
• I love making photo collages. 我喜欢做照片拼贴。 来自互联网

6 streaks   

n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹

参考例句：

• streaks of grey in her hair 她头上的绺绺白发
• Bacon has streaks of fat and streaks of lean. 咸肉中有几层肥的和几层瘦的。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

7 emblematic   

adj.象征的，可当标志的；象征性

参考例句：

• The violence is emblematic of what is happening in our inner cities. 这种暴力行为正标示了我们市中心贫民区的状况。
• Whiteness is emblematic of purity. 白色是纯洁的象征。 来自辞典例句

8 glamorous   

adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的

参考例句：

• The south coast is less glamorous but full of clean and attractive hotels.南海岸魅力稍逊，但却有很多干净漂亮的宾馆。
• It is hard work and not a glamorous job as portrayed by the media.这是份苦差，并非像媒体描绘的那般令人向往。

9 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

10 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。