At the heart of 1960s avant-garde New York was the convergence of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker, heralding an unprecedented musical revolution. The Velvet Underground was a unique group for its time, fueled by the visual arts, poetry, and stage performance, as much by ideas of sexual transgression and the subversion of social norms.
Compiled from archival ephemera, unpublished photographs, films, album covers, posters, fanzines, letters, testimonies, and poems, this monograph gathers anew the Velvet Underground Experience exhibition that opened in Paris in 2016 for a US audience, recreating the sound, visual, and emotional experiences of the underground scenes in New York, where extravagances were always allowed.
This updated monograph explores the genesis and history of a group that, despite its colorful collaboration with Andy Warhol, was overlooked by success during its brief existence (1965-1970). Too radical, too transgressive, and too uninhibited for their time, the Velvet Underground has become a cultural phenomenon over the decades, one that continues to fascinate audiences around the world.
