«ATHLETES ARE GOING TO BE THE NEW MEDIA STARS»

Warhol was an outsider to the sports world, so securing athletes was not an easy task for Weisman. A few of the athletes had reservations about Warhol, most notably golfer Jack Nicklaus. “He had heard that Andy might be weird,” Weisman recalls. Most of the athletes agreed to the project when they learned that Muhammad Ali was on board. Warhol traveled to Ali’s boxing camp in Deerlake, PA to shoot the Champ, who understood Warhol’s unique place in the pop culture stratosphere and was excited about his selection. “This little negro from Kentucky couldn’t buy a fifteen hundred-dollar motorcycle a few years ago and now they pay twenty-five thousand dollars for my picture!”Similar to Ali, Abdul-Jabbar had no reservations about joining the project. “My initial reaction to being chosen to be in Andy Warhol’s athlete series was one of being proud that I was considered to be worthy of that distinction,” Abdul-Jabbar says via email. “I was aware of the fact that Warhol was an artist who had emerged to become one of the trend-setters in modern art.”Warhol flew to California to photograph Kareem on November 4, 1977. He was amazed at the center’s sheer size, commenting that he could literally fit between his legs. Abdul-Jabbar remembers Warhol as a relaxed and focused artist, who conducted the session seriously. “When I met with him to pose for the polaroids he used as a study of his subjects, I had an interesting talk with him concerning the impact of his art,” Abdul-Jabbar recalls. “He told me how various images—soup cans, cleaning products—were parodies of the nature of America’s popular culture. It made it possible for me to have an insight as to how Warhol’s images said something about who and what we are as a nation.”

www.slamonline.com
Oct 27 2010