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Andy Warhol, The Glam Factory

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Iconic screen prints, photographs and illustrations from Andy Warhol are on display at the Foundry, Dubai, from 20 September to 31 October. 

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was the leading figure in the American pop art movement and one of the 20th century’s most influential artists. His career was very complex (Netflix’s six-part series ’The Andy Warhol Diaries shows many interesting aspects of it).

How relevant he is today is demonstrated by the number of simultaneous exhibitions in major art spaces across in Berlin, London, Munich and Dubai. Nada Ghandour curated the very first Warhol exhibition in Dubai hosted by the Foundry, featuring over 100 original pieces created by the artist from the 1960s to the 1980s. Foundry, a hybrid art space in Downtown Dubai’s Boulevard offers a great surrounding to Warhol’s creations. The event introduces Andy Warhol through many highlights of his biography and gives a peek into the legendary scenes of the artist’s life, such as the Factory or the Studio 54. 

We collected a few milestones of his life and his works. 

Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as Andrew Warhola to Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants (his parents were from Miková, a city in today’s northeastern Slovakia). Warhol showed artistic talent early on and his mother encouraged his artistic activities, especially during his long-term illness Sydenham chorea (a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary movements). He attended free art classes at the Carnegie Museum and later he studied commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in pictorial design. 

He moved to New York in 1949, starting a career as an illustrator for magazines (his first assignment was for Glamour Magazine), for example with his recognisable shoe illustrations. He quickly became successful; Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Bergdorf Goodman, Tiffany & Co., and Columbia Records were among his many prestigious clients. 

In the early 1960s, Warhol shifted to painting, and he was an early adopter of the silk screen printmaking process. Soon he was known for his bold, repetitive depictions of everyday objects like Campbell’s Soup cans or Coca-Cola bottles and for his portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor, using silk screen printing techniques. Although he had grown into into one of the most well known artists, he continued to take on commercial clients throughout his career. 

Joann Lacey (History of Art and Architecture: Volume Two, 2021) wrote – ‘Warhol attempted to take pop beyond art to become a lifestyle, and his work often displays a lack of human affectation that dispenses with the irony and parody of many of his peers.’ 

In 1963 he relocated his studio to East 47th Street, which would turn into The Factory; it became a hub and a famous-infamous gathering place for artists, celebrities, musicians, and socialites. Later he moved with The Factory to three other places, but the concept stayed the same – Warhol and his diverse friends and acquaintances created the atmosphere for which The Factory became legendary. His creative experiments also involved different media; like photography, film, multi-media shows or even music. 

Warhol survived a near-fatal shooting in 1968, carried out by Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist. This event profoundly affected him, though he continued creating art. 

In 1969, Warhol and British journalist John Wilcock founded Interview magazine, later nicknamed ‘The Crystal Ball of Pop’. (The magazine is celebrating its 55th birthday with 6 different covers this fall.)

In the 1970s and 1980s, he produced commissioned portraits for wealthy patrons and explored new mediums like television and publishing, further increasing his influence on pop culture. He met an other emblematic figure of the era; the Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani in the seventies. The two also created the now legendary campaigns, for Polaroid for example. 

In 1979, the Whitney Museum of American Art organised the exhibition ‘Andy Warhol: Portraits of the ‘70s’. He made music videos, created computer art, and produced experimental television shows that merged the fashion, entertainment, and art world (including Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes on MTV).

His complex relationship with the rebellious American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) began that time too and was marked by mutual admiration, collaboration but also tension and critique.The duo created over 100 works together, blending their distinct styles—Warhol’s cool, detached pop art with Basquiat’s visceral, emotional expressionism. 

Andy Warhol died in 1987 following complications from gallbladder surgery.

His commercial works elevated their subjects to beyond themselves and his style and choices influenced a wide society. He would pick certain accessories to complement his outfit which would connect the object to Andy Warhol forever. Such was the Piaget Black Tie watch, which although he and Yves Piaget would meet a regularly in the ‘70s, he acquired in the NYC boutique – 7 of them gradually. These associations live still today. With the licence support of the Andy Warhol Foundation, Piaget decided to close the 150th celebration of their brand by renaming the Black Tie watch to Andy Warhol watch.

The exhibition in the Foundry, Dubai is open until 31 October 2024, but if you missed it, look around in your 200 kms circle, I’m sure you’ll find one just opening.

‘Andy Warhol changed the way we look at the world, and the way the world looks at art. … He invented new ways of image making, vastly expanding what was considered fine art, and also a new kind of artist, one who merged art and life, and treated painting, photography, filmmaking, writing, publishing, advertising, branding, performance, video, television, digital media—and even his own persona—as equally valid terrain for creative experimentation. Often lost in his own celebrity and myth is the fact that he is widely considered one of the most important postwar artists of the 20th century.’ – The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Photo credits: Loupiosity.com
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