Clowning Around in the Warhol Spirit

This was definitely not one of the downtown Museum of Contemporary Art’s carefully scripted performances. At 6:15 p.m. Saturday, the opening day of the Andy Warhol retrospective at the museum, a benign-looking tour bus with tinted windows pulled to the curb, and a pile of crazy clowns poured out.

There was Andy himself, with his unkempt, trademark hair in fluorescent green, a neon pink face and sickly green dots floating across his countenance like Warhol’s hibiscus flowers. Look, an evil Pippi Longstocking, and there, Marilyn Monroe with a short, sassy skirt, red, white and blue bloomers and red go-go boots.

Then came cars, pulling up for valet parking, a black BMW, and a silver Dodge Avenger, with more and more clowns, tumbling out like a circus illusion. The museum workers rushed to the sidewalk, walkie-talkies in hand.

“I didn’t even know this was happening,” said Lana Shmulevich, a museum employee in a MOCA vest who sighted the pranksters first. “I don’t even think the museum knew about it. They probably would have done something about it.”

But the clowns had tickets. So the raucous pranksters and mad hatters flounced through the entrance behind the neon Andy, a team of men in suits and walkie-talkies in tow.

“Are you interested in the audio tour?” the deskman chirped out like a tape-recorder, as the band of clowns swung into the gallery. They weren’t. The security guards swarmed, the clowns fanned out among the neon Marilyns, Elvises, Jackies and Maos. An S&M; clown in a leather G-string, motorcycle boots and riding whip admired Warhol’s “Do It Yourself (Sailboats).” Earnest museum-goers interrupted their art appreciation to stare at the spectacle. Some were solemn. Some confused. Some giggled, quietly, museum-appropriately, at the delicious outrageousness of it. Some even removed their audio headsets, as if in a trance. Was this part of the exhibit? Or no? Would someone please explain?

A child looked frightened. A clown with a pointed neon bra flashed her coils for some curious spectators. They were operated by a button under her arm, she explained, batting her false pink eyelashes.

Unannounced, unexpected, and very, very un-MOCA, the clowns gathered from Los Angeles and San Francisco to celebrate what they called the true spirit of Andy Warhol. “It’s a prank for the Warhol opening, in the Warhol flavor of getting your 15 minutes of fame,” a member of the Porn Clown Posse (PCP) and a Silicon Valley executive who identified herself only as iCandy, explained in a mysterious phone call before her pilgrimage to Los Angeles. “We will dress like clowns, act like Factory types, strike a pose. It’s in a Warholian vein. If they don’t like it they are hypocrites.”

The group consisted of a handful of San Franciscans and more than 20 locals, most of whom are actors, actresses, performance artists and photographers, when they aren’t posing as Factory workers.

Two of the clowns had even been hired as performance artists for the Hollywood-like premiere for the Warhol retrospective at MOCA last Wednesday, when imitation Warhols in white Warhol wigs served drinks at the bar, and an imitation Candy Darling wriggled on a platform. “We were hired to be ambience,” said Kari French, of the flashing neon bra, who dressed as Silvergirl at the premiere. “It was great to get sloshed and hang with celebrities, but this, tonight, we are making a statement.”