Andy Warhol was an American artist, who was well known for his photography, films, and his creation of the visual art movement known as Pop Art. This weekend, I was fortunate enough to see some of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, at an exhibit entitled “Andy Warhol- From A to B and Back Again”. The exhibit included 3 whole floors filled with his portraits, illustrations, and videos.
The first floor focused on his portraits, which were his largest body of work. However, they were more than just ordinary pictures of people. They were painted over, using acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen. He used colors to outline their faces, add shapes to the background, and completely distort the photos. Upon entering the room, I was taken over by the overwhelming amount of vibrant colors, giving each portrait its own sort of attitude. Another aspect that made these photos so striking was the amount of familiar faces. Warhol often photographed the rich and famous, and it was interesting to see the large variety of iconic people, who were all vastly different in life, but these portraits were able to tie them together in a very fun and unique style.
The second floor contained a selection of his experimental works, including various films and videos. Much of it was Warhol himself doing fairly regular things, yet he was able to make these activities seem so disconnected from reality.
The third floor was the largest and had the most variety. I walked through pencil illustrations, paintings, and may photographs that he had edited in a way that made them so distinctive and eccentric. Many pictures were displayed using repetition, the same picture over and over again, but as you looked closer, you could detect a slight contrast in each one. One photo that stood out to me was Suicide (Fallen Body), 1963.
I found this photograph so interesting because at first, I really didn’t know what I was looking at. Then, upon reading the description, I realized that it was the body of someone who had just jumped from the top of the Empire State Building, and landed on a car. Warhol did not take this photo himself, but he found it and added his style to it, repeating it and changing the contrast to the point of abstraction. I had to take a close look to identify the woman in the picture. This evoked strong feelings for me because the description explained that the subject was a bookkeeper named Evelyn McHale. Knowing the story behind it, I felt a very depressing tone, seeing her displayed repeatedly, each row getting darker until she was basically gone. The style fits in with the other photos in this show, but I think this one definitely stands alone from the rest, as it wasn’t set up or planned, but a very real moment, the end of someone’s life.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire show as a whole, and it gave me a distinct idea of why Andy Warhol became such a well known photographer. Although some things were very different, such as the illustrations or videos, they all seemed to fit in to a specific taste, or feeling. The feeling of stepping just a little bit outside of ordinary life, and abstracting things you normally wouldn’t give a second thought. I think this feeling was communicated very effectively to the viewers, as every piece of art was open to many different fun interpretations. I would definitely like to see more work by this artist, as well as find out more about his life, and who he was as a person.
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