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Exhibition
A penetrating and panoramic look at an artist whose “15 minutes” endure
Andy Warhol. Shot Orange Marilyn (detail), 1964. Private collection. © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
This major retrospective—the first to be organized by a US institution in 30 years—builds on the wealth of new research, scholarship, and perspectives that has emerged since Andy Warhol’s early death at age 58 in 1987. More than 400 works offer a new view of the beloved and iconic American Pop artist, not only illuminating the breadth, depth, and interconnectedness of Warhol’s production across the entirety of his career but also highlighting the ways that he anticipated the issues, effects, and pace of our current digital age.
Warhol gained fame in the 1960s for his Pop masterpieces, widely known and reproduced works that often eclipse his equally significant late work as well as his crucial beginnings in the commercial art world. This exhibition brings together all aspects and periods of his varied and prolific career and includes paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, videos, archival and printed material, installation, films, and media works. By showcasing the full continuum of Warhol’s work, rather than focusing on a certain period, this presentation demonstrates that the artist didn’t slow down after surviving the assassination attempt that nearly took his life in 1968 but entered into a period of intense experimentation.
Warhol, with obvious self-deprecation, described his philosophy as spanning from A to B. As this exhibition decidedly proves, his thinking and artistic production ranged well beyond that, but his true genius lies in his ability to identify cultural patterns and to use repetition, distortion, and recycled images in a way that challenges our faith in images and questions the meaning of our cultural icons.
This exhibition was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Artwork
Warhol was an amazingly prolific artist. Chart his career and some of the themes he explored in the image galleries below.
Early Work
After graduating from what is now known as Carnegie Mellon University, Warhol began his professional career as a commercial illustrator. At the same time he was making his own art: drawings of fanciful shoes, friends, and intimate subjects.
Sixties Pop
In the early 1960s, Warhol began to look to the commercial world for inspiration—reproducing images from advertisem*nts, comic books, and newspapers in a distinctly hand-done manner. He also began to experiment with screenprinting photos on canvas, a technique he would use throughout his career.
Self-Portraits
Warhol was often his own subject. Throughout his career, he produced dozens of self-portraits.
Celebrity
Warhol was fascinated with the idea of celebrity in all its various forms—from movie stars and athletes to political figures and rock stars.
Death and Disaster
In the mid-1960s Warhol produced a “Death and Disaster” series that focused on images of car crashes, race riots, electric chairs, and a grieving Jacqueline Kennedy. He returned to darker themes again in the 70s and 80s with canvases focused on skulls and guns.
Later work
After surviving an assassination attempt in June of 1968, Warhol ventured even further into experimental new media, collaborated with a younger generation of artists like like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, and even explored abstraction.
All images: Andy Warhol. © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Sponsors
Leadership support ofAndy Warhol—From A to B and Back Againis provided by
Bank of America is the National Tour Sponsor.
Major support for the Chicago presentation has been made possible by Caryn and King Harris, The Harris Family Foundation.
The Auxiliary Board of the Art Institute of Chicago is the Lead Affiliate Sponsor.
Additional funding is contributed by the Shure Charitable Trust, Maureen and Edward Byron Smith Jr. Family Endowment Fund, Constance and David Coolidge, Robert J. Buford, Penelope and Robert Steiner, William and Robin Downe, Cairy and Thomas Brown, Margot Levin Schiff and the Harold Schiff Foundation, Vicki and Bill Hood, and Lauren G. Robishaw.
Members of the Exhibitions Trust provide annual leadership support for the museum’s operations, including exhibition development, conservation and collection care, and educational programming. The Exhibitions Trust includes an anonymous donor; Neil Bluhm and the Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation; Jay Franke and David Herro; Kenneth Griffin; Caryn and King Harris, The Harris Family Foundation; Karen Gray-Krehbiel and John Krehbiel, Jr.; Robert M. and Diane v.S. Levy; Ann and Samuel M. Mencoff; Sylvia Neil and Dan Fischel; Anne and Chris Reyes; Cari and Michael J. Sacks; and the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Official Airline of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Additional support is provided by the Illinois Office of Tourism.
