"I don’t know where the artificial stops and the real starts." –Andy Warhol

Beginning on November 6, The Warhol will host two new photography exhibitions featuring Warhol’s work. 

Arriving in Pittsburgh from a successful three-month stint at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Nadar/Warhol: Paris/New York juxtaposes Warhol’s fascination with portrait photography against the portrait work of 19^th-century French photographer Nadar. 
 

Beginning his artistic career as a journalist and caricaturist, Nadar soon added photography to his creative arsenal, becoming known for his stunning portraits of Parisian artists and "social theorists," such as artist Jean-François Millet, actress Sarah Bernhardt, and writer Alexandre Dumas. Gordon Baldwin, an Associate Curator in the Getty’s Department of Photography, argues: "Each was the most important visual artist of his time to set out deliberately to create celebrity for their subjects, and Nadar’s studio, like Warhol’s ‘Factory,’ was an important gathering place for the culturally adventurous. Both artists were interested in multiple imagery and both achieved acceptance by the establishments that, ironically, they had sought to provoke." 

The second exhibition, Andy Warhol: Photography, is an expansive overview of Warhol’s photographic career. Organized by Germany’s Hamburger Kunsthalle in cooperation with The Andy Warhol Museum and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the exhibit examines Andy’s world as seen through the lenses of his cameras and features, among other formats, photo booth pictures, Polaroids, and stitched photographs.

"Nadar/Warhol is a very interesting way to deal with artists," observes renowned Factory photographer Billy Name, whose work can be seen in each of the two shows. "It places them within the overall art world and shows how artists do have more insights and [how] an artist is an artist is an artist; each has his own style of presentation, but they [all] tend to travel the same paths." 

Name feels that these two exhibitions of Warhol’s photography—not the medium usually associated with Warhol—are indicative of a healthy change in public and art world interest and focus: from the persona of Warhol to his art.

"Both shows are dealing with Warhol’s artwork from a more traditionally European perspective," continues Name. "Europeans have always tended to focus more on the art itself [rather than on Warhol’s sensational subjects]. I think the impact of Andy, just his phenomenal magic, has taken years for people to get over. But¼ it’s a healthier way to deal with Warhol—with his art, rather than with his personality, which is such a difficult thing to focus on. It’s like trying to hold a puddle of mercury in your hand! Not to dismiss the fantastic Andy, because that was such an intense phenomenon, and real, and probably had a greater impact than most artists’ artwork. But [it’s time] to focus on the artwork itself, and let the fantastic go right along with it. It’s like you’re dealing with a cake, and Andy’s the icing on the cake, and everybody’s been writing about the icing, and now we’re dealing with the cake."
 

Where in the World is Warhol?

• After travelling through New York, Toronto, London, Marseilles, Sydney, and Perth, The Warhol Look/Glamour Style Fashion will be in Auckland, New Zealand from August 21 until November 14. Organized by the Warhol Museum, The Warhol Look examines how fashion and style influenced Warhol and how they were influenced by him. It features works culled largely from the Warhol Museum’s art and archival collections, including clothing, photographs, paintings and drawings, period magazines, fashion illustrations, reconstructed window displays, films, and video,

• The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is holding a retrospective exhibition of one of Warhol’s least-studied media—his drawings. Prepared cooperatively by the Andy Warhol Museum and Switzerland’s Kunstmuseum Basel, Andy Warhol Drawings 1942-87 features over 200 "rarely seen" drawings spanning Warhol’s whole career, beginning with a self-portrait of the artist at age 14. Other exhibition highlights include illustrations done for Vanity Fair and Mademoiselle, selections from Fifteen drawings based on the writings of Truman Capote (his first solo show in 1952), and portrait studies of friends. The show runs from August 7 through November 28 before completing its tour at The Warhol Museum.

• The Warhol exhibition recently at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico 

City will move next to Eastern Europe as it begins its United States Information Agency-sponsored tour. At press time, specific countries for exhibition were still being decided upon.