For my last artist talk or walk, I decided to go to an exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art called Andy Warhol The Last Decade. The BMA organized with the Milwaukee Art Museum to create an exhibition to Andy Warhol, the exhibit displays more than fifty large scale works that reveal the energetic return to creative experimentation and painting that marked Warhol’s last decade. The BMA uses this exhibit to revisit the politics and pop culture involved in the late 70’s and early 80’s of Warhol’s work.
Andy Warhol was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker, yet many didn’t know that his birth name was Andrew Warhola. Warhol was the leading figure in the visual art movement also known as pop art. Warhol is best known for starting his career by creating paintings of iconic American products, such as the Campbell’s Soup Cans, Coca-Cola and such celebrities as Elvis, Muhammad Ali, and Elizabeth Taylor. In 1979, reviewers and critics disliking Warhol’s celebrity portraits calling them superficial and commercial, however he was not phased and continued with his portraits saying “I love Hollywood. They’re so beautiful. Everything is plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.” Clearly stating his appreciation for Hollywood glamour. Sadly, Warhol died in New York City on February 22, 1987. After a good recovery from a routine gallbladder surgery, he suffered from a post-operative cardiac arrhythmia causing him to die suddenly while sleeping.
While walking through the BMA, amazed by everything that Warhol created I discovered a bazaar piece that turned into my favorite piece. This particular piece is a self-portrait of Warhol created in 1978 using acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen. I love this piece because it demonstrates Warhol and all of his different sides; he took a single self-portrait, multiplied it by four and overlapped them on line using silkscreen printing, a technique that often showed up in his work. However, before printing on the linen, Warhol painted with acrylic paints to add a bit of color similar to a 1980 exercise jumpsuit. This painting is extremely trippy and certainly one of my favorite pieces that Warhol created.
