Warhol Live!

“The Sex Pistols arrived in the U.S. today. Punk is going to be so big. They’re so smart, whoever’s running their tour, because they’re starting in Pittsburgh where the kids have nothing to do, so they’ll go really crazy.” -Andy Warhol

The Velvet Underground & Nico - "Andy Warhol", 1967, by Andy WarholThe de Young museum’s latest exhibit, “Warhol Live”, opened last weekend and once again the press preview was a fantastic happening. The tour was led by curators Stéphane Aquin of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Timothy Anglin Burgard, the Ednah Root Curator-in-Charge of American Art at the de Young, whose expertise, love of Warhol, music, and 20th Century culture were shared by all. Also participating in the talk was Paul Maréchal, whose collection of Warhol record covers is central to the exhibit.

From "Warhol Live" at the de Young“Warhol Live” is not simply another Warhol show of soup cans; this exhibit explores the influence of music and dance on Andy Warhol’s work, and finally, within this context, his work truly comes to life. The whole exhibit is wired for sound, with music playing from the moment you cross the threshold. As time and art change, so does the music, chronicling that other essential element of popular culture right along with the visual culture. The curators called this a new musicological approach that embodies a new art history. It is a high-concept, technical approach but it absolutely works for this artist in particular.

"I liked Dylan, the way he'd created a brilliant new style. He didn't spend his career doing homage to the past, he had to do things his own way, and that was just what I respected." - Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol album covers at the de YoungWarhol was in constant dialogue with music and music-makers, creating over fifty album covers in his career. Most of us only think of The Velvet Underground’s Andy Warhol, or the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers covers, but there were many more from the 1950s through the 1980s. (These are shown brilliantly, suspended in clear glass cases, so the viewer can walk around and see both sides of the album art.)

Apart from the album art, Warhol explored his own experimentations in music with The Velvet Underground and his band Exploding Plastic Inevitable. There are also his many experimental films created at The Factory. “Warhol Live” re-creates the exuberant chaos of The Factory with photographs, artifacts, and even a silver-painted room with a plush mohair settee. (Sitting in it at the show, I fully expected a drunken Edie Sedgwick to flop down and spill her wine all over me.) The curators likened The Factory of New York City to an urban commune: creative, free-spirited, and replete with utopian ideals. No wonder so many people got lost inside of its silver walls.

A lone visitor enjoys the Velvet Underground room at Warhol LiveThere is also a Velvet Underground room – behind a dark velvet curtain, with a light show, cushions on the floor, and a projection of Nico sipping on a coke splashed across the wall. It would have been very easy to simply sit down and relax in there for the rest of the day – especially with a few joints.

Yet with all of the sound and noise happening, the art itself still shows a lonely quietness. Andy Warhol was known to be rather detatched and shy, and his voyeuristic perspective is frequently misunderstood for simple emptiness. Instead, this show aims to show the opposite: that he was in fact so much more sensitive and emotional that his work is anything but superficial.

Triple Elvis, 1963 by Andy WarholThe large silk-screened Elvis Presley cowboys at the start of the show, for instance, are an iconic Cold War image. An all-American icon as the “white hat” cowboy, confrontational, and ready for a fight – this man is an existential hero of the American ideal. Warhol’s art, the curators assert, is humanist; they are images of heroes, time, death, true love, and longing.

"Studio 54 is a way of life. People live there. They dance there. They drink there. They make friends there. They make love there. They become stars there. They do business there. They sleep there. Sometimes, when it's really fun, I can't help but think that someone will be murdered there. We never had an earthquake there, but if we did, it would be at Studio 54." - Andy Warhol

Liza PolaroidsDouble Liza Minelli, 1979, by Andy WarholIn this light, the artist is described as the “tragic conscience” of the late 1970s and early 1980s decadence. An entire room of the exhibit is given over to memorabilia from Studio 54, and the many colorful portraits of celebrities created during this time. These portraits in particular show Warhol to be engaged, vital, and significant during a time when many considered him to be a mere “portraitist for hire”. By chronicling his own “Vanity Fair”, as Stéphane Aquin said, he was in the moment and defining the moment. This room of portraits is truly vibrant and powerful, presenting the paintings together along one long wall to build color, rhythm and impact. There are also Warhol’s own Polaroid snapshots of certain celebrities like Liza Minelli and Debbie Harry, showing the starting point of the larger paintings.

"Sticky Fingers" snapshotsEight Mick Jaggers, 1975, by Andy WarholSome of my favorite Polaroids were in the Mick Jagger room, showing the original jean crotch-shots that later developed into the Sticky Fingers cover. Warhol and Jagger’s friendship is beautifully chronicled here, showing the creative influence and affection both men had for each other. Indeed, the eight silk-screened portraits of Mick Jagger from 1975 are as alive and exciting as a simple photo-booth strip.

"Jean-Michel (Basquiat) was picking me up to go see Miles Davis at Beacon...B.B. King played first and he's just great. And then Miles Davis came out, blond, in gold lamé, and he played really terrific music. High heels." - Andy Warhol

Double Stephen Sprouse, 1984, by Andy WarholAndy Warhol is sometimes too easily written-off as a mere “pop” artist who created iconic imagery that undermined the capital-A “Art” world. “Warhol Live”, with its musical elements and exhilarating arrangements show that “pop” comes from not only “popular culture” but also “popular music” – Warhol didn’t define the iconography, it defined him. At long last, Warhol’s dialogue between his work and the world he lived in are appropriately celebrated in context together. With it's many rooms and unusual artifacts, this exhibit treats the viewer to not only an audio/visual perspective of Warhol, but also creates a wholly interactive experience of other times and spaces that is difficult to leave.

As a final note, both the exhibition catalogue, Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol’s Work and the catalog of record covers Andy Warhol: The Record Covers 1949-1987 are beautiful and substantial tomes, that are rather substantially priced at $75.00 each. My one merchandising thought however, concerned music. The final touch to this exhibit would have been a “Warhol Live” CD – mixing Velvet Undergound, jazz, Rolling Stones, Judy Garland, Bob Dylan, Maria Callas, disco, Blondie, Talking Heads, and even some early Madonna. This would have been a logistic-intensive project for the museum to pull together, but it would have been a very fun item to have! Regardless, if you have a music collection like I do, you'll make your own playlist and your neighbors too will wonder when The Factory moved in next door...

Warhol Live
February 14 - May 17
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, Golden Gate Park
Tuesday - Sunday, closed Mondays, extended hours on Fridays
Visit: http://www.warhollivesf.org/index.asp for details

The Velvet Underground & Nico - "Andy Warhol" and "Triple Elvis" courtesy of FAMSF

All other images by Poetic & Chic, 2009

Comments

[The Preppy Princess]

Oh Lord Miss Annie, this is an incredible post about an incredible show...wow! It just sounds utterly fabulous, too much to take in. Just seeing one element of it would be cool, like his Polaroids, but all of it?! Awesome.

But you are right about the missed merchandising opportunity on the music CD, that would have been excellent.

Thanks for this post, it is too good!
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