"I
don’t know where the artificial stops and the real starts." –Andy Warhol
Warhol and Photography
…Worth A Thousand Words
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 19th-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?
Auckland, Minneapolis and Eastern Europe Welcome Warhol
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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,
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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.
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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.
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