IN LIVING COLOR Andy Warhol and Contemporary Printmaking FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF JORDAN D. SCHNITZER AND HIS FAMILY FOUNDATION INTRODUCTION Jack Becker, PhD Executive Director & CEO Joslyn Art Museum In Living Color: Andy Warhol and Contemporary Printmaking It is only fitting that the curator of this exhibition, Karin is Joslyn Art Museum’s second partnership with Jordan Campbell, Phil Willson Curator of Contemporary Art, D. Schnitzer. A consummate collector, passionate about hails from Pittsburgh, Warhol’s first home. With a keen art and artists, and warmly generous to institutions and eye, Karin has organized an exhibition that explores how audiences across the nation, Jordan has created one of Warhol depicted the world with “the volume turned up,” the nation’s premier collections of contemporary Ameri- challenging how we understand popular culture, poli- can prints. Spanning eras, subjects, and styles, his collec- tics, and consumer society. In Living Color examines the tion is a treasure trove for anyone interested in art of the way that Warhol’s use of color impacts both subject and twentieth and twenty-first centuries. viewer, and how it established a model that influenced Jordan’s taste is comprehensive and broad in its scores of fellow artists. scope, but he has also collected a number of artists in Joslyn Art Museum is delighted that this exhibition particular depth. In 2013, Jordan sponsored the exqui- has met with enthusiasm from so many of our museum site two-volume The Prints of Ellsworth Kelly: A Catalogue colleagues. We are pleased that audiences in Savannah, Raisonné. The first publication to focus on the full body Tampa, Tulsa, Jacksonville, and Wichita will have a of Kelly’s printmaking practice, it is a gift to scholars and chance to experience this compelling view of Andy collectors alike. Andy Warhol likewise captured Jordan’s Warhol. Finally, a heartfelt thanks to Jordan for making Front cover: Above: imagination. A household name, a brand, known to his collection available to audiences in Omaha and Andy Warhol Andy Warhol everyone and yet an enigmatic figure, Warhol is the beyond. We celebrate his generous and passionate spirt (American, 1928–1987) (American, 1928–1987) Flowers, 1970, proof, screenprint, Camouflage, 1987, edition 51/80, master of pop and an icon of twentieth-century America. for the arts. Thank you. 38 1/8 x 28 1/8 inches, Publisher: screenprint, 38 x 38 inches, Factory Editions, New York, Publisher: the Artist, New York, ©The Andy Warhol Foundation ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights 3 Society (ARS), New York Society (ARS), New York IN LIVING COLOR Andy Warhol and Contemporary Printmaking Karin Campbell Phil Willson Curator of Contemporary Art Joslyn Art Museum Andy Warhol (1928–1987) once famously quipped, “I artists in the postwar era who use color as a tool to like boring things.” Indulging this affinity throughout shape the way viewers read and respond to images. his career, he depicted the mundane, the everyday, the Warhol was the leading figure of American Pop obvious, and the overused. Yet Warhol also became Art, a genre that emerged in the late 1950s in reaction one of the most influential and in-demand artists of the to the heroism associated with Abstract Expressionism. twentieth century. Spanning three decades of his career, For Pop artists, sociopolitical turbulence coupled with In Living Color: Andy Warhol and Contemporary Print- unprecedented consumerism meant that art could no making from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and longer be about the individual, as it had been in the His Family Foundation examines how Warhol’s “boring years immediately following World War II. To that end, things” came to life through his exuberant use of color. they endeavored to eradicate the notion of the “genius The exhibition features some of the artist’s most iconic artist” and to downplay the role of originality in art, screen prints, including his portraits of Marilyn Monroe adopting mechanical means of generating images, such and Mao Zedong, the splashy camouflage series, and as silk-screening. In drawing inspiration from the rapidly the controversial Electric Chair portfolio. Each of the changing world around them, Warhol and his contem- exhibition’s five sections—experimentation, emotion, poraries pursued an approach to making art that was Mary Heilmann experience, subversion, and attitude—places a signifi- inclusive and more aware of the day-to-day conditions of (American, b. 1940) Joaquin’s Close Out, 2006, edition cant body of work by Warhol in conversation with other contemporary life. 18/25, aquatint with spit bite and sugar lift aquatints, 40 x 30 1/2 inches, Publisher: Crown Point Press, San 5 Francisco, ©the Artist Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987) Camouflage, 1987, edition TP 10/84, screenprint, 38 x 38 inches, Publisher: the Artist, New York, ©The Andy Warhol Josef Albers Foundation for the Visual (American, b. Germany Arts/Artists Rights Society 1888–1976) (ARS), New York Homage to the Square, 1967, edition 35/125, screenprint, 24 1/4 x 24 1/4 inches, Publisher: Editions Domberger, Stuttgart, for Galerie der Spiegels, Cologne, EXPERIMENTATION ©2014 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York America’s involvement in foreign wars was one dom- as his celebrity portraits cannot truly be divorced from inant aspect of life in the mid-twentieth century that their subject matter, the camouflage prints are laden became a theme in the work of many Pop artists, with sociopolitical implications. Despite Warhol’s radical including Warhol. Modern camouflage originated during color alterations, viewers are still reminded of the chasm the First World War when the emergence of aerial and that camouflage has signified in the United States. trench warfare necessitated concealment of troops and German-born Josef Albers (1888–1976) was known matériel on the battlefield. During the Vietnam War for taking a scientific approach to color. In his book Dorothea Rockburne (1959–1975), protestors appropriated camouflage, Interaction of Color (1963), widely considered the defin- (Canadian, b. 1932) Locus #4, 1972, edition 28/42, turning it into a symbol of the unbridled power of the itive text on modern color theory, the artist proposes aquatint, 40 x 30 inches, military-industrial complex and the hubris of the that individual perception—along with more concrete Publisher: Parasol Press, Ltd., New York, ©2014 Dorothea American government. For Warhol, the fact that cam- factors, such as hue and saturation—is critical in deter- Rockburne/Artists Rights ouflage was widely recognizable and had acquired new mining one’s experience of color. Albers’ seminal Hom- Society (ARS), New York meanings over time made the pattern ripe for experi- age to the Square is one of the most significant bodies mentation, and while he aimed to distance himself of work to address color experimentation. Executed from Abstract Expressionism, he identified with the during the last twenty-five years of the artist’s life, this recent history of American painting—and camouflage extended series comprises hundreds of paintings and surface, challenging the capacity of the human eye to embossed surfaces. Using aquatint, an etching tech- provided a fascinating study in abstraction. prints that use a simple compositional device—concen- “read” the picture plane. nique that produces a watercolor-like effect, the artist Warhol based the 1987 Camouflage series on cloth tric squares—to investigate myriad chromatic interac- Like Warhol, Dorothea Rockburne (b. 1932) is applied subtle tonal variations, contributing further to purchased at a military supply store in New York City. tions. Unlike Warhol’s interest in the broader cultural typically known for her energetic colors; however the prints’ sculpted quality. By removing color entirely Applying a range of spectacular and inorganic colors to relevance of camouflage, Albers selected a neutral sub- her 1972 aquatint series Locus is notably restrained, from the Locus series, Rockburne gives primacy to the camouflage, the artist sought to nullify its function as a ject to act as a vehicle for the unadulterated experience highlighting process over palette. To create these inherent material properties of paper and her innovative tool of disguise and deception while extricating the pat- of color. In Homage to the Square, he plays with color monochromatic abstractions, Rockburne ran folded approach to printmaking. tern from its associations with wartime. However, just contrasts to create the illusion of depth of field on a flat sheets of paper through a printing press, resulting in 6 7 Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987) Electric Chair, 1971, edition 183/250, screenprint, 35 1/2 x 48 inches, Publisher: Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich, Switzerland, ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Louise Bourgeois Arts /Artists Rights Society (French-American, 1911–2010) (ARS), New York My Hand, 2002, edition of 10, lithograph on vintage cloth, 11 x 8 1/2 inches, Publisher: SOLO Impression, Bronx, NY ©The Easton Foundation/ EMOTION Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Ross Bleckner Pop artists were also known for their use of “ready- penalty had subsided and his oeuvre had shifted to less (American, b. 1949) mades,” prefabricated objects isolated from their grim topics. He claimed his objective was to divest the Dream and Do, 1997, edition 50/75, 17-color screenprint, original functions and recontexualized as art. Warhol electric chair of meaning, arguing, “When you see a 33 x 42 inches, Publisher: Lococo expanded the realm of the ready-made to include pho- gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really Fine Art Publishers, St. Louis, ©the Artist tographs, often sourcing material from mass media. have any effect.”1 Known for making intentionally provoc- The electric chair first appeared in his work in 1963, the ative statements, Warhol may or may not have truly same year that New York administered its final chair exe- believed that his images were capable of anesthetizing cution at Sing Sing State Penitentiary.