{"id":2706,"date":"2015-06-16T11:49:36","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T10:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=2706"},"modified":"2011-10-24T09:03:55","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T09:03:55","slug":"warhol-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/warhol-is-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Warhol Is Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warhol Is Here\u2019 –\u00a0Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion –\u00a0Saturday 24\/9\/11<\/strong><\/p>\n

You might be thinking, as I was, that almost everything that could be said about Andy Warhol, has been said, many times over, leaving us with little need to repeat still further. The fifteen minutes of fame he predicted would be everyone\u2019s lot seems to have been multiplied many times for the saying\u2019s originator.<\/p>\n

From his beginnings as a graphic artist, window dresser and advertiser, to his creation of an alt-celebrity club for fellow artists, to his acceptance by the smart set and his tragically early demise, all have been noted, annotated and endlessly repeated, like so many of his silk screen paintings, that we are left wondering what else could possibly be left to discuss. A selective overview of Warhol\u2019s popular works is one answer, and \u2018Warhol Is Here\u2019 on display free at Bexhill\u2019s stunning architectural show space, the De La Warr Pavilion, is well worth the visit.<\/p>\n

Taking place on three levels of the crotchet-shaped building, the main hall guides us through works by genre, starting with the earliest, where Warhol incorporated rubber-stamp images to create pictures, often getting friends to finish what he had begun. The floral and angelic themes made these composite pictures resemble Victorian \u2018scraps\u2019. His shoe and hand fetishes were apparent even then, with the familiar heel-to-toe silhouette of a ladies\u2019 shoe and the caressing hand touching a kitten turning up like advertising images, something that would later earn him a living as an illustrator.<\/p>\n

This comforting world of leisure and pleasure quickly gives way to more in\/famous images as we see the news-reportage image of the Birmingham, Alabama race riots, a police alsatian biting the trouser of a fleeing man as police officers, billy-clubs at the ready, wait to pounce.<\/p>\n

Aside, a stack of white boxes advertising pan-shining pads await unpacking, and ahead, the \u2018Marilyn Monroe\u2019 diptych, on loan from the Tate, hangs defiantly staring out at us. These repeated, slightly offset images (colour on the left, black & white on the right) have become even better known than the original photographic image they were based on, and still have the power to fascinate as they seem to suggest a side to the star her studio would never have promoted.<\/p>\n

Separate, differently coloured images of Chairman Mao-Tse Tung have his genial grin as the focus, at odds with his administration\u2019s brutal treatment of any degree of dissent from its people. Warhol\u2019s indiscriminate fascination with celebrity, however garnered, is well represented by just these two, even though many more adorn the walls.<\/p>\n

Warhol\u2019s love of Americana is unavoidable and central to his work, both its positive, all-inclusive side (brand-name canned soup, a single can, rather than one repeated on an industrial scale) and its dark side (electric chair, the variously coloured images chilling in their intensity).<\/p>\n

His more human side is apparent in the nudes, among them a beautiful Venus rising from her shell, slim bodied and demure, and the highly charged homoeroticism of the male nudes. Warhol\u2019s self portraits in conventional clothes and a series of blond wigs raise questions which he usually answered, if at all, in dull monosyllables.<\/p>\n

Warhol\u2019s tendency to \u2018direct \u2018 paintings, at least as often as painting them himself, throws up the question of authenticity, probably none more so than the films his name was applied to. There is no doubt about the publicity this name generated for them though, and some beautifully preserved examples of the posters are here, largely in German language format. They are possibly the most telling of exhibits, as the films tend to follow popular themes of the 60\u2019s & 70\u2019s, Chelsea Girls (basically a portmanteau film) Blue Movie (anything but) and Blood for Dracula (horror, in 3-D, another gimmick) but with the art house twists that major studios were shy of. The posters advertising shows at the Fillmore Ballroom and the Scene offer a rare glimpse into the world of the much talked about but rarely seen Velvet Underground, Warhol prot\u00e9g\u00e9s and Factory house band who would slowly acquire a cult following and later still, worldwide fame.<\/p>\n

The smaller, first floor room is made suitably claustrophobic with \u2018Cow\u2019 wallpaper, paranoid maps of Cold War-era USSR and its reputed missile stations, huge dollar signs and double-take faces, a nightmare in silk screen, reflecting the darkest recesses of Warhol\u2019s psyche.<\/p>\n

Perhaps in tribute to the multi media shows the Velvet Underground played, the second floor has a round table of cassette tapes, loaded with interviews with various people who knew Warhol, among them Brigid Polk\/Brigid Berlin, one of the Factory\u2019s long-term habitu\u00e9s. Apart from winning this writer\u2019s personal seal of approval for classic technology (you know, the sort that has four buttons which do what they say on them), they open a window on as many opinions as there are speakers, sometimes more than one.<\/p>\n

This exhibition is free and those of you who are new to either Warhol or Bexhill\u2019s magnificent De La Warr Pavilion have until 26th February 2012 to see it.<\/p>\n

Scenester
\n24\/9\/11<\/p>\n

Andy Warhol, Mao (1972), from a portfolio of ten screenprints, private collection<\/p>\n

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych (1962), Tate \u00a9 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts \/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ DACS, London 2011<\/p>\n

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait with Fright Wig (1986) \u00a9 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts \/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ DACS, London 2009<\/p>\n

All images kindly supplied by De La Warr Pavilion<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might be thinking, as I was, that almost everything that could be said about Andy Warhol, has been said, many times over, leaving us with little need to repeat still further. The fifteen minutes of fame he predicted would be everyone\u2019s lot seems to have been multiplied many times for the saying\u2019s originator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,56,108],"tags":[533,121,245],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-articles","category-exhibitions","tag-andy-warhol","tag-eyeplug","tag-scenster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2706"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=2706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}