And while he was also well known for his creative take on different subjects, like The Last Supper or Rorschach tests, it was his concentration on the people and objects of midcentury America that made him a household name.
Walking through the exhibit is walking through his curated view of America: Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Superman are all highlighted. Patti Smith cynically notes this in Just Kids when she says, “I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it.” And it’s true, he did reflect and repurpose what was around him.
His work and reputation are thoroughly entrenched in American culture, which is best explained by the fact that his work was, largely, about American culture. Most people know of Andy Warhol and can probably associate him with Pop art or a Coca-Cola bottle. It is for this exact reason that his exhibition at The Whitney has been so successful. Burger King even included him in its Super Bowl commercial-arguably the most important marketing campaign of the year-by featuring a clip from one of his films in which he silently unwraps and eats a Whopper. In the last week alone, I saw “Warhol & Mapplethorpe: Guise & Dolls” displayed prominently at Book Culture, heard him mentioned in “Victoria Gotti: My Father’s Daughter,” and saw an ad on The Cut for a new line of Uniqlo T-shirts printed with his Campbell’s soup cans. He survived the attempt and his reputation became even more mythical as a result.Įver since reading Smith’s reverential portrayal, I began to notice Warhol everywhere. One of these women, Valerie Solanas, tried to murder Warhol in his studio in 1968. Sitting at his table in the back room at Max’s Kansas City was the first step to being taken seriously in the city’s artistic underbelly, and fledgling actresses like Edie Sedgwick shot to stardom after they were featured in the films he shot at The Factory. He was woven throughout the narrative as the gatekeeper to the New York City art scene for the young artists residing at the Chelsea Hotel. I first became interested in Andy Warhol after reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids this summer. It’s gotten rave reviews in The New York Times and The New Yorker and has become one of The Whitney’s most well-attended exhibits of all time. The exhibition, which is considerably larger than the typical feature at The Whitney, has been a rousing success. The retrospective exhibit includes 350 works that span three floors of the museum. “Andy Warhol-From A to B And Back Again” opened at The Whitney Museum of American Art on November 12, 2018.
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