About the Work
This photograph features an image of Elvis Presley at his last ever concert in New York City on June 9, 1972. Depicting the music legend with his arms, clad in a white cape, outstretched like an angel, the filmstrip bursts into a flame of red light, seemingly foreshadowing Presley’s descent into addiction, and eventual death in 1977.
Elvis Presley, Madison Square Garden, New York, June 9, 1972. Last New York Concert was created for the Art Affair: Chinatown 2010, which benefited the Guggenheim Museum’s Young Collectors Council Acquisitions Fund. Featuring works by Lizzi Bougatsos and Jonas Mekas, the Art Affair celebrated two generations of contemporary artists who work in many media including film, photography, collage, and installation.
The sale of this work will benefit the Young Collectors Council. Over the past ten years the Young Collectors Council has raised funds to purchase more than 120 works of art for the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. The YCC and its Acquisitions Committee is the only group of young professionals in New York City that has made a lasting commitment to support emerging contemporary artists and to expand the collection of a major, internationally recognized, museum.
About the Artist
Jonas Mekas is a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, writer, and curator known as the “godfather of American avant-garde cinema.” The founder of the Anthology Film Archives in 1964, which remains the world’s most important repository of avant-garde films, Mekas has directed and produced numerous projects of his own, ranging from narrative compositions (Guns of the Trees, 1961) to documentaries (The Brig, 1963) and “diaries” (Lost, Lost, Lost, 1965). Subjects of his works include Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her children, as well as John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Mekas’s work has been presented at venues such as the 51st Venice Biennale, Documenta 11, the PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and the recently re-opened Eero Saarinen designed JetBlue Terminal at JFK Airport. In 2005, Mekas shot 365 short videos for Apple Computer’s Video iPod, which he released once a day on his website. A lecturer on film at MIT, Cooper Union, and New York University, Mekas opened the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2007.
Elvis Presley, Madison Square Garden, New York, June 9, 1972. Last New York Concert, 2010
by Jonas Mekas
PhotographProceeds from the sale of this work will benefit the Guggenheim Museum.
