Andy Warhol is one of the best-known—but perhaps least understood—artists of the 20th century. “Warhol shifted the paradigm. He shifted the conversation. That's why we're still grappling with him. Love him or hate him,” says Donna De Salvo, the senior curator and deputy director for International Initiatives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, who recently organized the blockbuster exhibition "Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again" (on show now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, until 2 September).
Beyond the glamour of the celebrity and consumerism so often associated with Warhol, there is something destabilizing about his work, says Dominique Lévy, the co-founder of Lévy Gorvy—which is showing “Warhol Women” in New York (until 15 June). “If you spend enough time in front of a Warhol painting, little by little it unnerves you,” Lévy says.
When people fetishize the trophy of the Marilyn, they're missing a certain point of the way that Warhol is constantly disrupting,” De Salvo says: “Whether it's the off registration of the screen, through the color, through the scale, the multiplicity of images. He's not about a fixed image. He's actually quite the opposite and that gets to issues of identity.”
Together with host Charlotte Burns, Lévy and De Salvo discuss the radical aspects of Warhol's work, discussing how much of it is still undervalued and under-appreciated—particularly drawings from the 1950s and works from the 1970s and 1980s. “He reinvents himself and becomes more and more conceptual, and more and more relevant,” Lévy says.
“His project ends because he dies,” De Salvo says: "He was just getting going again." Ultimately, she says, Warhol “reflected these twin American desires, which are at odds: our desire to innovate and our desire to conform.”
For this and more, tune in today.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-60-warhols-women/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.
Today’s podcast is a lively one, taking in authorship and authority, productivity and capital in conversation with Alistair Hudson (director of The Whitworth and Manchester Galleries), Bernadine Bröcker Wieder (CEO and co-founder of the Vastari Group, a platform connecting museums, private collectors and other exhibition organizers) and our host Charlotte Burns.
Taking different approaches, Hudson and Bröcker Wieder are both interested in what a more equitable art world would look like and both are invested in community and collaboration.
The dialogue on democracy, community, tech and collaboration closes with a call for openness. “I see a big role for institutions reclaiming this territory of culture,” Hudson says: “How we shape and create our culture as being above and beyond politics and economics.”
Tune in today for more.
Transcript: https://www.artagencypartners.com/transcript-55-bernadine-and-alistair/
“In Other Words” is a presentation of AAP and Sotheby’s, produced by Audiation.fm.