News - 22 May 2018 Andy Warhol-Founded Interview Magazine Folds After Nearly Five Decades 3 minutes

In further news: white supremacist vandals attack Rothko Chapel; Israeli minister bans art produced in solidarity with Palestinian victims

Justin Bieber on the cover of Interview magazine, 2015. Courtesy: Interview magazine Justin Bieber on the cover of Interview magazine, 2015. Courtesy: Interview magazine

Justin Bieber on the cover of Interview magazine, 2015. Courtesy: Interview magazine

Interview magazine, founded by Andy Warhol in 1969, has folded after nearly 5 decades in operation. The news follows several years of financial problems and lawsuits faced by the magazine. Its closure first emerged when staffers tweeted about it. According to reports, staff were told that the magazine was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The magazine is famous for its sprawling conversations with art world and pop culture celebrities, often interviewing each other, and was once nicknamed ’the Crystal Ball of Pop’. In a 1977 interview, Warhol claimed that when he was drunk, ‘I tell everyone they can be on the cover of Interview.’ Recent years have been less kind – the magazine was unceremoniously locked out of its New York offices in February for its failure to pay rent, and former COO Deborah Blasucci filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against current owner and billionaire art collector Peter Brant (who bought the magazine in 1989) alleging wrongful termination. The troubles didn’t stop there. Editorial director Fabien Baron departed in April and then later sued claiming unpaid invoices, while creative director Karl Templer left in the same month (Templer has been accused of sexual misconduct in a Boston Globe report; he denies the claims). Interview Inc. said in a statement: ‘The Company has been operating at a financial loss, and had been funding its losses and costs of its operation through loans obtained from its secured lender. The losses, however, continued to mount, and the Company did not believe its financial condition would improve in the foreseeable future.’

Houston’s Rothko Chapel was hit by vandals last Friday 18 May, in what its executive director David Leslie is describing as a ‘hate incident’. According to reports, white paint was left at the entrance and in the reflection pool containing Barnett Newman’s sculpture The Broken Obelisk (1963–67), which is dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., while flyers were left around the area that read, ‘It’s okay to be white’. A police investigation has been launched. The chapel and sculpture have not been permanently damaged. The chapel, with contains 14 murals painted by Mark Rothko, was built in the early 1970s by collectors John and Dominique de Menil. It aims to offer a ‘sacred space open to all people’. Leslie commented: ‘we were replenished by the powerful response of support we received from visitors and the community.’