Michael McKenzie (artist)

rdf:langString Michael McKenzie (artist)

rdf:langString Michael McKenzie

rdf:langString Michael McKenzie

rdf:langString New York, United States

rdf:langString Self portrait of Michael McKenzie taken in 1985

rdf:langString American

rdf:langString New, Used and Improved: Art for the Eighties

rdf:langString Author

rdf:langString artist

rdf:langString publisher

rdf:langString Michael McKenzie (born 1953 in New York, United States) is an American artist and writer. His mother a fourth generation Irish/German and his father of recent Scottish immigrants. He began writing, drawing, painting and publishing at a young age, his first publication, at age 5, was Two Cents Plain, a four-page magazine (selling for 2 cents) he made using a mimeograph machine at his father's office. A fluke meeting at the 1964 World's Fair with his grandmother introduced him to Philip Johnson, Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana, all three of whom he would later work with. McKenzie studied creative writing at Middlebury College, Columbia, The New School and Brooklyn College under five Pulitzer Prize Winners Mark Strand, Charles Simic, Anthony Hecht, John Gardner, John Ashbery taking multiple degrees. While in school he founded the literary & art magazine Undine with a board of directors that included NY Times Executive Editor Harvey Shapiro, Larry Rivers and Tennessee Williams. He took up journalism mainly under the mentorship of Shapiro and Truman Capote who encouraged him to pursue that artform "because if you want to know what great artists are really like they can fool you with media stories and awards but not with their eyes". To that end he interviewed and/or photographed a wide portfolio of artists who interested him including Capote, Williams, Albee, Warhol, Rivers, Nureyev, Lou Reed, The Ramones, Blondie, Madonna; such leading sports figures as Ali, Jordan and Namath and a wide scope of comedians including Carlin, Klein, Murray, Belushi, Radner, Joan Rivers, and Phyllis Diller. He paid his way through college and grad school as a portrait photographer and added silkscreening when he worked on a portrait project with Andy Warhol who introduced him to that print making/painting form. He took his MFA under John Ashbery and, on the advice of comedian George Carlin who he had interviewed and photographed, wrote his first book and the first on the television show Saturday Night Live! while still in school. He followed that up with successful titles on Madonna ["Lucky Star" Contemporary/MacMillan Books] and "Billy Joel: Piano Man [Ballantine Books], the first books on both of those artists. Collectively, his titles have sold over 1,000,000 copies and been published on five continents in 12 languages.