Warhol exhibition not to be missed – The Royal Gazette

Factory work: Andy Warhol’s works were lent to Bermuda National Gallery by the Green family (Photograph supplied)

Pop Art was in part a reaction against the high seriousness of Abstract Expressionism. It was also a celebration of the popular culture of the 1950s and 1960s, especially the world of advertising, product design, movies, cartoons, comics and television. All this was grist for the pop art mill.

Indeed, Pop Art married the fine arts with commercial art. Some of the prominent artists in the movement actually began their careers as commercial artists.

It was, however, Andy Warhol who revolutionised, revived and transformed the society portrait. Warhol’s portraiture, at best, makes the more traditional society portrait seem drab.

And some of Warhol’s work is on display at Bermuda National Gallery in the Portraits from the Factory exhibition.

But who was Andy Warhol?

Warhol was a leading figure in the Pop Art movement, who with his blonde wig and dark shades, projected himself as Mr Cool. Actually, he was far more complex.

Warhol’s wonders: on display at Bermuda National Gallery (Photograph supplied)

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1928 of immigrant parents from Czechoslovakia. Even as a child, Warhol was artistically gifted. He also excelled in school generally.

He studied art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology where he earned a BFA with emphasis in Pictorial Design. After graduating, in 1949, he moved to New York City where he lived and worked until his sudden death in 1987.

The current Bermuda National Gallery Andy Warhol exhibition is about the Warhol portrait, especially portraits from the Factory.

I can report that upon first entering the Warhol exhibition at BNG, I was stunned by five large portraits of Mick Jagger which were located directly across from the gallery entrance. That I was impressed is an understatement.

Keep in mind, until then I had never been a particular fan of Pop Art. But these portraits are different. They are the product of Warhol and his very accomplished team of creatives. They exude a freshness that is unique in portraiture.

But what did the Factory have to do with the success of Warhol’s portraits?

The Factory was a centre of modern technological wizardry, meaning, it was a place where creative wizards made art by means of a mix of modern technologies, such as photography, multicoloured serigraphs, sculpture and film.

Warhol’s five images of Mick Jagger, on display at Bermuda National Gallery (Photograph supplied)

Although the silk-screen printing process is ancient, going back initially to medieval China, it was only in the last century that it became a means of multicoloured printing, including the use of photography applied to serigraphy.

It was Warhol who first saw the potential of serigraphy (silk screen) in the mass production of his art. It is also known that Robert Rauschenberg made use of serigraphy in art, but it was only after a visit to the Warhol factory that he began do so.

Warhol’s portraits are a multi-technical, multimedia product which began with Warhol taking a series of Polaroid photographs, of the person being portrayed.

The photo was then enlarged and made ready to be silk screened and so on. All I can say is that it was a complex procedure that utilises modern technology along with traditional painting and drawings by Warhol, along with a highly specialised team of assistants.

The so-called “Factory” was located in four different locations between 1963 and 1987. It was not only a highly creative workshop, it was also a social centre that attracted other artists, musicians, celebrities and Warhol’s Super Stars.

By means of the “Factory”, Warhol was able to produce a prolific amount of work over his relatively short lifetime. It’s estimated that he produced more than 9,000 paintings and sculptures, 12,000 drawings, plus 100,000 photographs and 650 films.

But the use of assistants is not all that unusual in the history of world art. Indeed, going back to at least the Renaissance and perhaps even earlier, artists were trained and assisted master artists in their particular workshops. Even in the modern period, the sculptor Henry Moore, for example, had a team of assistants working with him. He could not have accomplished all his many commissions without their assistance.

Still, it was Warhol who extended the concept of “factory” as a place of mass production in art. In that sense, calling a workshop a factory, instead of studio or workshop, seems appropriate.

It seems that Warhol’s portrait practice started with celebrity portraits from magazines. Think of his portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jacqueline Kennedy, even chairman Mao and Richard Nixon, none of which were commissioned – nevertheless, they did lead to his being commissioned by Ethel Scull, a New York socialite, to produce her portrait. Thereafter, commissioned portraits became an important aspect of his art business.

In the case of the Scull portrait, she requested that it be repeated 36 times.

Warhol’s use of repetition was an early device that he used in his paintings of Campbell Soup cans or Coke bottles and even with his portraits of Marilyn Monroe. His repeating Scull’s portrait 36 times was therefore not new, except in this, a commissioned portrait. His use of repetition remains a legacy he received from advertising and the commercial world.

Warhol’s Mick Jagger portraits are repeated five times. they were, however designed to be used in the cover of a recording. In that sense it was to be repeated many times over, but separately so.

This Warhol portrait exhibition has been generously loaned to the Bermuda National Gallery by Alexander and Andrew Green, from the Green family collection.

Warhol’s three pictures of Mary-Jean Mitchell, on display at Bermuda National Gallery (Photograph supplied)

The three paintings of Mary-Jean Mitchell Green were a commissioned portrait of their mother. What is important with this commission is that it includes a number of the Polaroids that Warhol took of Mrs Green in conjunction with the portrait commission.

Other portraits in the show include one of the then Prince Charles, chairman Mao, Richard Nixon and even one of Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union.

This exhibition was curated by Eve Godet Thomas. The Greens not only loaned the artworks for the exhibit. They have also sponsored the exhibition and all the accompanying educational programming.

This is such a splendid exhibition. It showcases the work of an internationally important artist and to think that it is locally sourced is astounding. We are grateful. I highly recommend it.

• Andy Warhol: Portraits from the Factory is on display at the Bermuda National Gallery through to January. Admission to BNG is free and made possible by The Christian Humann Foundation. The museum is open Tuesday – Friday 10am to 4pm and Saturday 10am – 2pm.