Andy Warhol, the king of pop art, once asked, “Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?” This query perfectly captures Warhol’s revolutionary take on the copy of ordinary images as a form of fine art, as Warhol chronicled the assembly-line stimulated mass production and compulsive consumerism of the 1960s throughout his career.
While he may be best remembered for his iconic reproductions of consumer goods and his celebrity snapshots, a different side of Warhol—specifically his experimentation with abstraction—has hit the Mall in a series of exhibits and events this fall.
To commemorate Warhol’s pioneering career, Warhol On the Mall features a new exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum, Andy Warhol: Shadows, and Warhol: Headlines at the National Gallery of Art. Along with these openings, which run until January 15 and January 2, respectively, Warhol’s works will be celebrated throughout the coming months both on the Mall and in locations around D.C.
Warhol On the Mall brings audiences a little closer to the icon through gallery events, talks with gallery curators, discussions led by Warhol scholars, and documentary showings that explore the work of an artist who has continued to fascinate viewers long after his death.
Although both Warhol exhibits diverge from the more ubiquitous, expected Warhol-ian pop art pieces, the Hirshhorn’s Shadows challenges our conception of Warhol’s repertoire in a clearer way, exhibiting his early trials with abstraction. Titled after Warhol’s photograph of a shadow at the corner of his office, this monumental piece cannot be appreciated by looking at one solitary canvas. The work was formed as a combination of parts, and it’s displayed as such. Composed of 102 panels lined edge-to-edge, the immense piece spans almost the entire wall of the Hirshhorn’s rotunda gallery.
While the form of the shadow, or a variation of it, is apparent on each canvas, Warhol’s vibrant palette of color and the positive and negative imprints created through the play of black and white create an intriguing pattern as the canvases progress. In this way, the viewer’s perspective continually shifts from one image to the next, giving the piece an interactive spirit. Likewise, the texture of acrylic paint overlaid on the silk-screened images grounds the repetition, giving Warhol’s typically mass-reproducible images a handmade and personal quality.
In keeping with this spirit, Warhol’s often comedic yet critical social commentary provides the theme of the National Gallery’s exhibit, Warhol: Headlines. The exhibition explores how Warhol’s fascination with news—particularly headlines—influenced his art.
Headlines proves a fascinating exhibition, because unlike the abstract subject matter of Shadows, the content of his variations on national and global news takes a direct route while reflecting on the political and social happenings of the ‘60s. For instance, one particularly politically charged piece overlays teletype texts announcing JFK’s assassination with popular photos of the beloved president and his family.
Moreover, Warhol’s work mirrors how the medium of news shaped his generation. Ranging from the comical headline about the “Tuna fish disaster,” which killed two suburban housewives, to the socially conscious and somber reproduction of “Fate Presto,” which recounts the devastation of an Italian earthquake, this exhibition captures the breadth of both society’s and his own fascination with news.
Adding another dimension to this interesting collection, the gallery layout of Headlines is organized chronologically to parallel Warhol’s artistic development, allowing the viewer to observe the evolution of the “machine like aesthetic for which he would become famous.”
While Warhol may be remembered most for his innovations in pop art, Warhol on the Mall and the variety of exhibits and events it boasts prove that Warhol was more than just a Campbell’s Soup promoter.
