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q IN BLACK I IAND WHITE

W N e w Ma r X f e M S T O C K by Chnstopher Lyon

5tm, c honce | The entire front page of theNew YorkPost was ot showers. I , e | NEw YoRKs FRIDAY, NovEMBER 3, 1961 lo Ce t | | n w - , I devoted to twlce: on June 4,

I I Pages85 88 1 1968,thedayafterhisnear-fatalshooting,and _111 1 on February 23, 1987, the day after he died. This apotheosis in black and white was the re- _ _ _ _ | was also aparticularly apt formofrecognition | ward of an artist obsessed by celebrity. But it _.' _ _ _ _ I A A _ _ I of an artlst who found In tablold newspapers I ______I someofhisearllestandmosteffectivelmages. - ______| "Warhol'sartisitselflikeaMarchofTime

_w _ _ _ _ _ | Andy_ Warhol:AA * Retrospective _ I senblum(opening in the publication accompanyingFeb- v | ruary 6), "an abbreviated visual anthology of _ , _ _ _ . . > ?V _ _ _ - | mythicA creatures,_ _ edibles,_ tragedies,the most consplcuous headllnes, personalltles,art-

b _ -_ . =s s r - __ | worKs, even ecologlcal proDlems ot recent t I_ | decades. If nothing were to remain of the years ,) _ 1 1962 to 1987 but a Warhol retrospective, fu- E | ture historians and archeologists would have a 9 : _ | fuller time-capsule to work with than that of-

i _ _ _ | feredbyanyotherartistoftheperiod." s t : _ A A I A survey of Warhol's early sources reads as _ |1 iE < - - . - r_ _ _ _ _ | a catalogue of the most pervasive forms of s. ;}.w _ _ _ _ mass prlnt communlcatlon. Headllnes. Ads. 0^0; J:_ _ _ A | portraits and candids. Wanted | Comic-stripposters. panels. News photos.Pro- Celebrity

, X: .L * 00______| duct logos and packaging designs. Warhol's _ ,; ; t; _ _ ^_ _ _ | appropriation-thenowclichedterm-ofthese _iL ; i ; f > z _ _ _ _ _ t formscanbeseeninthecontextofanongolng _ _ | cultural redefinition. Whole new provinces I of potential subject matter were annexed for modern art and a broader audience was X addressed. l _ _ | public expression to psychicAn earlier generationexperience had attempted to give

A I andhispee}stOOkhigh-impactpublicimagery_ _ | throughidiosyncratic,privateimages;Warhol _ _ _ | andmade itexpress personal concerns. What __ _ | led them in this direction? The example of

_= _ __ _ - _ | _ pact of = many _ forms of | othermass artists, thecommunication, powerfully direct visual im-

______| and the artists' own distinctive personalities _ _ _ _ _ | allplayedarole.Therewereprecedentsforthe use of comics, forexample, intheearly work of Warhol' s friend Philip Pearlstein and in cer- See Pog e 3 tain works of Jasper Johns. But the compre-

AndyWarhol.ABoy {W3 DAILY NEWS Ez ; DAILYS NEWS X Zhenslveness andvariety lolflwdarhod cantbe ex- * ib, 'en :,> , ...... s Te s.M ' *' .' =''' ...... \e. 8 ws t h.1, gisq,rbJub tw?1s ly.;elXlw w^r ...... 0r ?,: . plaiIled solely by presumed influences. for Meg. 1961. oun I Warholbasedhisworkofthel960sareexam . g .^ ..

_2->;i-;; ; @ @ S S * that he looked for a subJect ln whlch he was

; wE1 _ In nosplt/ llere; Llzm gome | most interested, by which he could define _Kffl magazines he read to follow himselfthe as an artist"lives and foundof it in "thethe fan

|I t.: ;tg ^ : , l |: Fa[ Y7 * i I -- | _w_ ads, their comics, -and | theirstars he adored,screaming and in the tabloids, head-with their

Andy Warhol. Daily1l3#ill 9!il | 1|- <>__ *-_ t E . . S __ oiX {@ _ found somehow; /w <_de ply | lines.Itwas'ea;y,'itwaswhathelovedandsatisfying, and it was News. 1962. Synthetic 1 ^ 11 atA 14_ _ I E * _r I ground just then bei lg explored by a new gen-

canvas.polymerpainton Collection C;IiI 1111I we_^| vA I * | I *I | Also_ in the exh _^ bition | erationofartispublication, s." Benja- Museum fur Moderne ,-Xh l r 5f _rrss min H. D. Buchloh, an art historian and critic, Kunst,Frankfurt. -: 1t l | pointsouttheimportanceofrecognizing"the

Photo:Rolf Lauter, degree to which postwar consumer culture was Frankfurt. a pervasive presence. It seems to have dawned on artistsof the fifties that such imageryand objectshad irreversiblytaken total controlof visual representationand publicexperience." But millions readabout, and were fascinated by, disaster and celebrity. Artists like Roy Lichtensteinhad recognized in thegraphic im- pact of ads and comics an untappedartistic potential. However, Warholexploited to a uniqueextent the realizationthat images al- readyinvested with powerful public meanings - ----...... , .*. . , ,... ,,*,...... # :s couldbe madeto convey as well complexpri- vateemotion and thought. The imagerypresented by Warholin eachof the five works that comprisedhis first major appearanceas anartist-in a displaywindow at BonwitTeller in 1961-reflects Warhol'sown "desires and deficiencies," McShine sug- gests, "forall trafficin metaphorsof metamor- k 0 phosis and self-transcendence." Warhol's :f-.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0: : desireto makehimself over finds a parallel,for V example,in the transformationof Popeye, the A publicitystill of MarilynMonroe for s subjectof one paintingin the displaywindow the film Niagara (1953), showing show, who "is madea new manby spinach(so cropmarks made by AndyWarhol. muchso thatin Warhol'spaintings, he seems CourtesyThe Estateand Foundation to be punchingthe pictureplane)." of AndyWarhol. Warhol's infatuationwith film stars and othercelebrities eventually led to the creation of some of his mostfamous paintings, such as those of MarilynMonroe, Troy Donahue,or Andy Warhol. The Six Marilyns~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~S~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1 Elvis Presley. Warholidentified with them (Marilyn Six-Pack). 1962. Silkscreen ink bothas objectsof desireand as role models.A on syntheticpolymer paint on canvas. counterpartto suchimages are Warhol's paint- CollectionEmily and JerrySpiegel. ings based on photos of fatal accidentsand Photo:Zindman/Fremont. other disasters, works that give form to our mostfundamental fears. 129 Die in Jet (Plane Crash) (1962) was the disaster,the bombing of a trainstation in Shang- first of what would come t6 be called the hai by the Japanesein 1937.Warhol, when a Disasterpaintings. The event be ng reported studentat Carnegie Institute, collected tear was thecrash on take-offat Parisof an airplane sheetsfrom Vogue, Life, andother periodicals. en routeto the United States. Many of those In the , when Warholworked in New who died werepatrons of the HighMuseum of YorkCity as a commercialartist, he frequently Art in Atlanta-it was an "artworld" disaster. borrowed illustrationsfrom the New York The Disasterseries, mainlyderived from news Public LibraryPicture Collection. He also photos, covers a lot of ground,McShine ob- copied from newspapers,according to Bert serves, fromcommon accidents to globaltrag- Greene,an associateand friend. Warhol used "In most edy: of the works, Warhol uses a light box to tracepictures and was using an 4 : repeatedimages to reinforcethe obsessive way opaqueprojector by the late 1950s for draw- ourthoughts keep returning to a tragedy,and to ings andlater for his firstPop artworks. stressthe flash of fame thatthese little-known In these early Pop paintings,Warhol vacil- - i@^| victimsachieve in death, as theirpictures are lated between two different techniques, as f;s repeatedin thousandsof newspapers." MarcoLivingstone points out in the exhibition The most powerfulof these early worksof publication:a loose copying, incorporating Warholcome from the intersectionof his ob- gesturalhandling -and exaggerated drips-a re- sessions with glamorand death: the imagesof sponse in part to the accepted look of New Marilyn Monroe and, perhapsmost affect- York School painting-and a second ap- ingly, the series devoted to JacquelineKen- proach,impassive in treatment,replicating the nedy.The events surrounding the assassination sourcematerial as closely as possible.He soon of PresidentKennedy provided Warhol with a came to preferthe "cold," impassivepaint- set of images that repetition,in printand on ings to the more"lyrical" ones. screenin the days followingthe killing, made Livingstonehas sketchedthe art-historical indeliblein the nationalmemory. lineageof this style, whichwould become the Warhol'suse of foundimagery dates at least characteristiclook of Warhol'sart: "Warhol's to his youth in Pittsburgh.At least one of his equationof the canvas with an appropriated earlypaintings was takendirectly from a pho- imagecan be viewedas anextension of Marcel tograph.Significantly, this early work, possibly Duchamp'sconcept of the Readymadeby way lost,,is saidto havebeen based on a photoof a of JasperJohns's paintingsof Flags and Tar- gets, whichhad been the subjectsof consider- ableacclaim and critical discussion when they were exhibitedat the Leo CastelliGallery in New Yorkin 1958." The mechanical copying of images was only a beginning, however. The process of transmissionalso involvedchanges that would transformthe image. Characteristically,such changeswere not imposedby Warholdirectly but insteadproceeded from some unforeseen aspectof the process. Whenworking with an assistant,for example-and Warholhad assis- tantsfrom very early in his commercialcareer- he observedthat there is a "certainamount of misunderstandingof what I'm tryingto do," but that he preferred this state of affairs:

If people never misunderstandyou, and if they do everything exactly the way you tell them to, they're just transmitters of -. B - A your ideas, and you get bored with that. But when you work with people who misunderstand you, instead of getting transmissionsyou get transmutations, and that's much more interesting in the long run.

4id{t^0 ii 1

r ;, f Far left: Andy Warhol. Untitled. 1960. ';1) .'';;'r Watercolor, pencil, and cut newspaper *;'i''''J'*-, ';' pasted on paper. Collection The Estate of 41, ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 * o;X,* ; ** H's.3S-f't ...... % Andy Warhol.

Left: Andy Warhol. Saturday's Popeye. 1960. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Collection Landesmuseum, Mainz. After experimenting with various other methods of printing, including the use of a rubber stamp or woodcut, Warhol moved to silkscreening. His initial use of the hand-cut silkscreen soon gave way to use of commer- cially produced photo-silkscreens. Images in the Disaster series were among the earliest to be produced this way. Synthetic polymer paint was used for backgrounds; the photographic image was itself printed in oil-based enamel or occasionally vinyl ink, "usually in black," Livingstone points out, "to reinforce the asso- ciation with newsprint photographs." Warhol's exploration of color, through his inventive use of screenprinting procedures, for example, or in the late Camouflage works, added layers of meaning and a remarkable complexity of vis- ual experience to the black-and-white founda- tion of his early work. In his 1980 book POPism: The Warhol '60s, written with Pat Hackett, Warhol re- called the first use of silkscreening:

In August '62 1 started doing silk- screens. The rubber-stamp method I'd been using to repeat images suddenly seemed too homemade; I wanted some- thing stronger that gave more of an assembly-line effect. Withsilkscreening, you pick a photo- __1 graph, blow it up, transfer it in glue ,11?|.__~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -: onto silk, and then roll ink across it so q 4 the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each -~~~~~~~~ time. It was all so simple-quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. My first experiments with screens were heads of Troy Donahue and , and then when Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face-the first Marilyns.

In this recollection, elements of technique fuse with eroticism, glamor, and death. The image used for the Marilyn pictures was cropped by Warhol from a publicity still by photographerGene Kornman for the 1953 film Niagara. Otherwise unaltered, it is neverthe- less transmuted by the peculiar alchemy of Warhol's art and becomes a contemporary icon and a reflection of our time. Warhol's own celebrity made him an appro- priate subject for his paintings, and self- portraits are an important aspect of his work. In the 1981 painting Myths, he comments wryly on his own fame and on his position in American popular culture. Seen in vertical strips of repeated images are Superman, at the extreme left, Mickey Mouse and Uncle Sam in the middle, and, along the way, Howdy Above: Andy Warhol. Jackie (The Week That Doody, Greta Garbo, and the Wicked Witch of Was). 1963. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer the West. The extreme right-hand column is paint on canvas. Collection Mrs. Raymond Goetz. filled with a repeated image of Warhol him- self. It is a study in white and black: his white- haired head at the very edge of the painting and the dark shadow of his face filling the frame, Left: Andy Warhol. Ambulance Disaster. 1963. presenting his profile with features simplified Silkscreen ink on canvas. Collection The Dia Art and exaggerated by the shadow's elongation. Foundation, New York. Courtesy The Menil The retiring figure of Warhol, who cast such a Collection, Houston. Photo: Noel Allum. long shadow over the culture of his time, is elevated to the pantheon of popular heroes- but, characteristically, it is the insubstantial, distorted image of the artist that dominates the Below: Andy Warhol in 1964. Photo: Ken Heyman frame; Warhol himself remains obscured. Off Archive Pictures Inc. to one side. Observing.

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