Andy Warhol

Artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987), one of the 20th century’s great pop art icons. Warhol exhibition brought to New Zealand’s Te Papa Museum, in Wellington recapitulates the impact and drawing on what remains an enigmatic figure in contemporary art and art history, even 25 years after his death.

Questions may arise how I am influenced by his work in relevance to my immediate practice. Seeing the exhibition in flesh encapsulated emotions towards the desire to reflect on the immediate effect he has on my contemporary practice and also reflect on the Warhol exhibition and the significance of his work on society. 

Te Papa’s Warhol: Immortal exhibition features the artists portraits and self portraits accrues various means of media including drawing, photobooth, snapshots, polaroids, paintings, screen prints, installations, and films. 

Warhol's featuring self portraits  appear glitteringly public yet intensively private. And openly gay yet quietly devout. Astronomically successful, yet painfully. The works which appear constantly changing and shifting between telling us nothing or telling us all. Precipitating emotions that fluctuate between a vulnerable and invulnerable, both superficial and profound. Throughout the exhibiting works we see him adopting different roles that appear playful, yet fraught in the exploration of his identity. One of the exhibiting self portraits appear a consuming jumble as three of Andy Warhol's faces appear overlapping and merging into one another yet slightly altered angles which only one pair of eyes meet the viewers. Self portraits have tradition been considered as a direct impression of an artists character. But for Warhol they were part of  care contrived public persona. 

There becomes an immediate attention to the idea of seriality noted throughout the exhibition.
It becomes evident the the printed reproductions and sources of images of Andy's work appear a misleading representation and impression that the paintings are uniformly flat in colour. But in flesh some of his painting is surprisingly painterly, elusive and shapeshifting.
Warhol said that he painted anybody that asks which he ttys to make people look good in a big yet simple design mostly.
Warhol himself was romantic about the relationship between art and commerce. Warhol craved fame for himself, but he also understood the way in which it could annihilate the person behind the image.”What is Warhol saying about fame, and the way it deforms not on the famous but us?”