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Sur les images retrouvées on voit GraphiCraft v27 Release 06, et sur la video du portrait numérique de Debbie Harry (ahhhhhhhhh blondieRhod a écrit :Il bossait sur Deluxe Paint , il me semble.
) on peut lire ProPaint V27 Release 14
‘Nine Warhols Waiting…’
— October 2011
Andy Warhol created digital art …in 1985! Where is it now?
Darrelyn Gunzburg reports on an art detective story from the beginning of the digital age.
On three occasions I have been privileged to interview people who have beeninvolved with revealing major lost or unknown art works. In 2007 I interviewed Michael Liversidge on his identification of two ‘lost’ Fra Angelicopaintings. These panels had been missing from the San Marco altarpiece(c.1438–40) since the Napoleonic occupation of Florence at the end of the18th century. This interview was published in The Art Book in June 2007 and I felt fortunate and exhilarated to have met an art historian who was sointimately connected with a unique event. Then in December 2010 DavidGlasser, co-chairman of Ben Uri, London Jewish Museum of Art, stumbledupon an unknown sketch by Marc Chagall entitled Apocalypse in Lilac:Capriccio in the catalogue of leading French auction house Tajan andpurchased it for Ben Uri. Again, I was the person who interviewed him aboutthis. When a third such opportunity occurred I began to feel as if I were amagnet for people connected with recovering art works. This article is thestory of that third event.
In May 2011 my partner and I were staying with our friends Don and Dorian Greenbaum in Massachusetts. I was waxing lyrical about an interview I had just completed with Elliot Davis at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Don lookedat me, plainly struck by a sudden thought: ‘Are you interested in a story on Andy Warhol's original digital art?'
In 1985, Don Greenbaum was the chief financial officer for Commodore International, in New York. Don shared an office in the Seagram Building withthe chairman, Irving Gould. Commodore acquired the Amiga computer in1984 and spent $27 million on completing both hardware and softwaredesign. By the spring of 1985 the Amiga 1000 was way ahead of anythingavailable on the market. It boasted video of 4096 possible colours, 8-bit stereosound, 256K of memory and a graphic interface of 248 colours, all of which was revolutionary. The IBM PC still operated in black and white. Also, the Amiga could handle Paint programs with which neither the Apple, nor the PC,nor even the Commodore 64, could compete. More importantly, the coloursand memory allowed for the development of highly sophisticated (for thetime) graphic processing. It was clear this was a machine that could beimportant to artists.
Stephen Greenberg handled Commodore’s public relations. When the officiallaunch was being planned he wanted a Pop artist to introduce the Amiga tothe art community. Greenberg knew Andy Warhol personally and Andy washighly receptive to the idea. On 14 June 1985, Andy went to the SeagramBuilding and Don gave him a demo of the machine and the drawingsoftware. As Don says, ‘Andy was captivated with this new medium and spenta lot more time with us than he planned’. So Commodore hired him toproduce some art for the planned July launch and appear at the launch.
They outfitted Andy’s 33rd Street studio with a prototype Amiga. As themachine wasn’t yet on the market, it came with pre-production software: apre-release version of an art program called Pro Paint. Don was the only employee in New York proficient with the Amiga and so Irving Gould askedhim to work with Andy. Don visited Andy’s studio several times, and worked with him when issues arose. Andy was enthralled with the machine andquickly set out to learn the software and master the mouse – at the time alittle-used device.
Don remembers it all vividly. ‘He was in his own world. You could talk to him but you could see that behind the eyes the mind was always thinking way ahead of you, focusing on what he could do with the machine rather than what you were telling him. His first attempt at a signature was what you expect anadolescent to scrawl with a crayon. Within a day he was signing his iconicsignature. What was interesting was that this was a man who didn’t use acomputer, but once he clicked on Autofill or on one of the drawing tools, henever forgot it. I’d go back a week later and he’d be doing stuff as if he’d takena tutorial on every single thing the software did, and a couple of times he said“It would be neat if you could do this or you could do this or you could dothat”.’
On 15 July 1985 Island Graphics (developers of the Paint program) rushedover a new version of Graphic Craft, fixing bugs that were hindering Andy’sprogress. Don called on Andy to deliver it and see how he was faring (thelaunch was now only week away). There on the Amiga computer screen wereimages of Marilyn Monroe, self-portraits, lilies, a dollar sign, even aCampbell’s soup can. Andy had played around with all his iconic ‘calling cards’and all were expressed in this mint-new computer graphics medium. Andy had Don copy nine of them onto a floppy disk for delivery to Commodore’smarketing arm, which was preparing the launch material. The highly excitedadvertising executives wanted Andy to do a live computer portrait at thelaunch. Andy, also enthusiastic about this new medium, wholeheartedly agreed. The launch was held at Lincoln Center on 23 July 1985, and you canstill see Andy’s Amiga launch portrait of Debbie Harry on YouTube.‘
He was an innovator’ says Don, ‘a revolutionary and who knows, if he hadn’tdied, that could have been his medium of choice. I remember when we first setup the camera to do photo capture, he looked at it and he looked at the imagefrom the camera going right into a computer and you could just see the wheelsturning.‘
Watch him in the YouTube video staring intently at the screen when he’staking a picture of Debbie Harry. The whole medium of digital photography was perfect for what Andy did. He’d go to shoots and take Polaroid images andthen turn them into art by painting over them. Now he could just take a videocamera still shot and draw on it, and that was a perfect Andy Warhol type of medium because so much of his work was portraits.’
A little over 18 months later Andy was dead.
But what happened to those first Andy Warhol digital art images that heproduced when he was learning to use the Amiga?
Searching his office, which is full of Commodore mementos from the 1980s,Don had already found a box of Commodore floppies, including a disk labelled‘Andy v27’ prior to my visit. Looking at it, the time that he spent with Andy and the launch of the Amiga 1000 came back to him vividly: ‘I rememberlooking at this disc and thinking [pause]… “Wow! Could this be the Andy Warhol pictures?” ’
It had been years since he had thrown out his own Amiga 1000. Within daysof my visit, Don found an original Amiga1000 on eBay along with disks of thesoftware, Deluxe Paint, the paint program marketed for the Amiga. Inanticipation he loaded the disk. To his delight, the files were all there. To hischagrin, the files would not open. He remembered that the program used onthe first Amiga operating system (and visible in the YouTube video when Andy created the Debbie Harry portrait) was Pro Paint.
Determined not to be defeated by ancient technology, Don joined several Amiga forums, made enquiries and procured various releases of Pro Paint. Allthe programs did, when attempting to open the pictures, was to reboot the Amiga. ‘Perhaps’, thought Don, ‘the files are just too corrupted after 20 yearsof being on the floppy’. But Don is not a man who gives up easily. He tried any paint program he could find. Nothing. Don returned to the Amiga user groups,quizzing them about the file’s structure. The replies came back: that filestructure was from the pre-release version of Pro Paint — and nobody ownsthis program now.
Don looked at the growing pile of floppies and emails. Everywhere he turneddoors were closing. Then, just as he decided it was time to put memories andthis old technology to rest, he noticed a forum posting by Alessandro Bartelettiregarding art on the early Amiga. Alessandro is a bright young Italianphotographer who was just three years old when the Amiga was launched.Don and Alessandro started a correspondence, each as determined as theother to reclaim this piece of history. Alessandro confirmed that the files werestill intact. While they seemed to be image files, however, every attempt toopen them continued to end in machine reboots.
Then, Alessandro noticed a file on the disk designated ‘Andy’. In June 1985,no windows-like operating system existed, and what Don had was AmigaDOS. Programs were opened from a DOS prompt and everything hadto be on the same disk to run. Those early programmers renamed the program‘Andy’ to make it easier to run the software. Thus ‘Andy v27’ had nothing to do with Andy Warhol. It was the software to create the images. Here was themissing link, not ProPaint but a pre-release piece of software that was nevermarketed. It had been in Don’s possession all along. In fact, it may be theonly copy left. Don had initially tried to open it, but when it crashed hismachine he left it alone. Alessandro was positive this was the key to therestoration of the graphic files. But it wouldn’t run. Was this yet another brick wall?
Finally, Alessandro emailed Don with some exciting news. He had realizedthat owing to the way the Amiga handled memory, Don needed a pre-release version of the boot ROM, which the motherboard would need to run thedisc. Alessandro painstakingly searched his sources and found a version of the June 1985 motherboard ROM. Lo and behold, he got ‘Andy’ to run. Thescreen showed ‘GraphiCraft Beta Release 06 for V27, 15 July 1985’, exactly asshown on the pictures displayed from the Amiga Lincoln Center launch. This was probably the first time in decades this software had been run.
Now Don was excited. Were the files still readable? He booted his Amiga1000 with the pre-release ROM Alessandro had supplied. He inserted thefloppy marked ‘Andy V27’ and got an Amiga Dos prompt. At the prompt hetyped ‘andy’ and up popped GraphicCraft. He right clicked the toolbar and
open picture
was now a choice. Nine picture names were displayed. They opened. ALL OF THEM. For the first time in over 26 years Don was runningGraphiCraft pre-release again and viewing Andy Warhol’s artwork! Theimages were exactly as he remembered them. He immediately emailed Alessandro, sharing his success.
Aided by the brilliant techno-sleuthing of Alessandro Barteletti, Don enjoyedthe challenge and success of finally being able to open the disc and look downmemory lane. This disc is Don’s own copy. He has now been able to copy theimages to a PC format and they are saved as JPGs so I could also view them.
After my visit, while Don was amassing his new collection of Amiga hardwareand software, he contacted the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts and the Andy Warhol Museum, as well as former assistants to Andy Warhol, toresearch more of this history. Vincent Fremont, who worked closely with Andy, remembers how Andy had learnt to use the Amiga computer at the 33rdStreet studio and that there had been at least one disk of Andy's early computer art. Don is certain they met at the studio as his office was rightnext to where the Amiga was set up. Vincent did not, however, know whathad become of the computer or the disc. He believes copies of theCommodore agreement with Andy are in the archives in Pittsburgh.
Nevertheless even if the Museum does have any of the Amiga floppies fromthe 33rdStreet studio, Don Greenbaum and Alessandro Barteletti take theirplace in history as the men who restored Andy’s first and, it would seem, only foray into digital art. Just as the great conservators of the past have been ableto restore Great Masters, Don’s and Alessandro’s expertise and painstaking work have resurrected Andy’s images from the old technology. The ‘Nine Warhols’, all signed by him and including three self-portraits, waiting in the wings for over a quarter of a century, may yet take their rightful place amongst Andy Warhol’s
oeuvre.
Credits
Author:Darrelyn Gunzburg
Location:University of Bristol
Role: Art historian
Background info
See the You Tube video mentioned by Don Greenbaum on http://www.youtube.com/v/3oqUd8utr14&hl=en Andy Warhol (1928–1987)died in his sleep in New York City at 6:32 a.m. on 22 February 1987, themorning after undergoing surgery for the removal of his gall bladder. The world mourned the loss of this innovative talent. The Andy WarholFoundation for the Arts was established in 1987 in New York and on 13 May 1994 the Andy Warhol Museum was established in Pittsburgh, Warhol’s nativecity. Warhol had begun his career as a commercial artist working foradvertising agencies, and later moved on to painting, often based onphotographs, and film work. He was one of the first American Pop artists andremains an influential figure.
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