Andy Warhol - Mr. America

Andy Warhol, Blow Job, 1964.2009 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.

Malba - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires
Through February 22, 2010

By María Carolina Baulo

Outrageous, extraordinary, the Andy Warhol phenomenon arrived in Buenos Aires with an itinerant exhibition, the largest dedicated to this artist in Argentina since his first exhibition in 2005. Malba - Fundación Costantini, in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and curated by Philip Larratt-Smith from Canada, presents more than 170 selected pieces with special attention on the period of 1961-68. Each piece represents the contradictory ideas existing within American society; 26 paintings, 58 prints, 39 photographic works, 2 installations (Silver Clouds and Cow wallpaper), and 44 films.

No one could ever say, even when not sharing or liking the pop aesthetic, that Warhol did not change the entire art scenario by getting involved with issues related to the main concerns of popular culture. The role of celebrities in society, love, death, sex, criminality, the power of mass media, the unstoppable progress in technology and above all, an entire universe of snobbism and voracious consumers are all displayed in his works.

Born into an Eastern European immigrant working-class family in 1928, right in the middle of the Great Depression, he grew up in Pittsburgh and from early childhood created in his mind some kind of ideal related to all the opportunities offered by the “American way of life” and the “American Dream.” Working as a commercial illustrator, he had the chance to relate directly with pop culture subjects. The usage of photography was the determinant that placed his work on the opposite side of the aesthetic of Abstract Expressionism, which ruled in the U.S. after the Second World War.

As Larratt-Smith explained, “Warhol understood that fame depends predominantly on a sustained interaction between a celebrity and the audience which he massages, provokes, flatters, and reflects, and that any shred of publicity is good publicity. More profoundly his understanding of how images on the television screen or in print collapse public and private and conflate fantasy and reality led him to want to try his hand at developing his own Hollywood empire.” A vivid example are the 1960s silkscreen paintings showing at the same time a glamorous, fantastic life, together with a fatal fate of loneliness, desperation and absolute lack of values; a world where everything has a price translated - or converted - into dollars, even people.

Everything in his life was extravagant and avant-garde. The Factory, his studio, was the bunker of all social meetings, gathering together the most awesome variety of people. Warhol opened the gates of his multiple sensitive worlds to every experience that could possible nurture his creativity. Andy Warhol, Mr. America gives the public a valuable opportunity - to use a commercial term, more than appropriate on this occasion - to verify first hand the importance of the imprint this charismatic artist left in the History of Art. First shown at the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República in Bogota (Colombia), now it can be seen at Malba, and finally it will be shown at Pinacoteca in Sao Paulo (Brazil) in March 2010.