ANDY WARHOL AT THE TATE MODERN, 19TH AUGUST 2020
Andy Warhol was born in
1928 in Pittsburgh, USA, the son of immigrants from Slovakia whose original
name was Warhola. Warhol began his
career as a graphic designer, the clean delineation and unindividuated use of
blocks of colour is unmistakable.
Warhol’s main aim was to make money from his talents, but he also wanted
to be taken seriously as an artist. He
therefore sought to create an artform based on the mass production techniques
of post-war American capitalism.
Warhol’s images of Campbells soup cans (100 Campbell’s Soup Cans
1962 by Andy Warhol, Casein paint, acrylic paint, and graphite on canvas) and
coke cans (Green Coca Cola Bottles 1962 by Andy Warhol) imply the equalising
impetus of US capitalism where rich and poor consume the same products. The repetitious banality of mass production
techniques implied in such artworks as a legitimate source of inspiration and
influence, as something just as important as depictions of the crucifixion and
Greek legends, for instance. This became
known as ‘pop art’, a new artistic movement growing out of the previous
orthodoxy, abstract impressionism, in the USA in the late 50s and early 60s.
An image of Marilyn
Monroe from 1962, painted on gold, resembles a Byzantine ikon of the Virgin
rather than a portrait of modern celebrity.
Warhol’s origins in orthodox Slovakia may offer a clue to the origins of
his art. Warhol combines the essentially
modern with the attitude of the maker of icons, at once offering an experience
to the believer of intimacy with a saint/celebrity and a simultaneous wariness
of making ‘graven images’. Orthodox
notions of Mariolatry seem to predominate in Warhol’s art in a variety of
forms. From the Marilyn Diptych to a
film of his mother sleeping and speaking Rusyn (the language spoken in Ruthenia
where Judith Warhola was born), religious devotion, Hollywood and mother
fixation all seem to percolate through Warhol’s art.
Warhol was also intent on
depicting America in the 60s, a period of ferment and change. In his Death and Destruction series, images
of Elvis, race protests depicting black protesters and their tormentors, a
woman in free fall from a New York balcony underline the rapid development and
changes America was going through.
Warhol’s art would be vapid decoration were it not for his preoccupation
with the political impact of the times the artist lived through. Images such as Black and White Disaster #4
(5 Deaths and 17 Times in Black and White) imply the slick, lurid media
fascination with destruction as three people wait to be freed from an upturned
car by rescuers. Two naval cadets lie
dead in the front seat. The blood-spattered
faces of the victims intimate the terror they have endured, one woman lies
prone in a bizarre yet intimate posture.
The repetition of the image heightens the sense of vicarious voyeurism
and the empty black canvas opposite implies the blank fascination with death or
emptiness. Iconic celebrities such as
Marlon Brando (depicted as a biker in film The Wild One), Marilyn
Monroe, Elvis, and political notables such as Jackie Kennedy, dominate Warhol’s
work until he began to assemble his own “superstars” in The Factory.
The Factory was an
attempt by Warhol to fashion a workshop similar in inspiration to the works of
Renaissance artists like Sandro Botticelli or Albrecht Durer yet with a
completely modern outlook. The factory
was dedicated to Warhol’s work in painting until film became his new
preoccupation. Warhol even announced his
own retirement from painting in the mid-60s. So-called “superstars” like Edie
Sedgewick, Holly Woodlawn, Nico, and Brigid Berlin populated Warhol’s films as
well as Warhol’s lovers, transexuals and trans-gendered people marginalised in
mainstream culture found a place in Warhol’s art. The films were never remotely popular or
financially viable apart from his work Chelsea Girls which also starred
Sedgewick. Warhol’s films challenged
orthodoxy, dwelling primarily on a single filmic element, time. Warhol began to manage pop band The Velvet
Underground and illustrated the iconic yellow banana cover of the first
album. This was not to be Warhol’s final
foray into pop album cover illustration since he designed the cover for The
Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers in 1971 and designed a screen
print of Mick Jagger in 1975.
In 1968 Warhol decided to
relocate The Factory and one day after the re-opening, Valerie Solonas, a
one-time Factory worker who had had bit parts in some of Warhol’s experimental
movies, delivered a volley of bullets into Warhol. Warhol fell to the ground wounded, taken to
hospital, he was declared dead but somehow the doctors managed to bring Warhol
back. The shooting changed Warhol’s life
even though his creativity did not appear to slacken, later critics believe
there was a significant decline in Warhol’s productivity. Paul Morrisey, Warhol’s co-director on
various Factory projects, believed that the shooting was responsible for
Warhol’s early death at 58.
Warhol’s mental and physical
health were affected by the shooting.
Warhol ended open access to The Factory and bullet proof glass was
installed. Warhol had to wear a
protective corselet and his wounds were a source of constant pain. Photographer Richard Avedon (1923-2004) depicts
Warhol’s agonising wounds in a photograph displayed at the exhibition and taken
in 1969, a year after Solonas’ attack.
When Warhol was called
upon to create a painting of the iconic personality of the 20th
Century, Warhol chose to depict Chairman Mao (1972) rather than other iconic
personalities like Albert Einstein. In
this case, Warhol wanted to underline America’s relationship with a rising
power after the visit of President Nixon in that year. In his 1976 work Skull Warhol fashions
an age-old artistic symbol, the memento mori, symbol of death and
dissolution but imbued with hilarity. In
a series called Ladies and Gentlemen (1975) Warhol depicts Latino
trans-gendered and trans-sexual drag artists although the political impulse
behind the works is obscure. As usual,
Warhol simply foregrounds the art without explanation. By this time Warhol was gravitating away from
the radicalism of The Factory towards celebrity culture and by the early 70s
Warhol was an international celebrity like the superstars he painted. Later screen prints offer even more gorgeous
and tightly organised imagery such as Debbie Harry (1980) and Robert
Mapplethorpe (1983).
Tate Modern’s new
exhibition of the works of Andy Warhol is a difficult but worthwhile task even
during a pandemic wearing a silly mask, my hands caked in sanitiser. Warhol would have concurred because the show
must go on!
Paul Murphy, Tate Modern,
2020
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