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July Issue 2003
Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, Welcomes Works by Warhol, Pop Art and the American Icon
On July
29, 2003, a special exhibition featuring Andy Warhol opens at
the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC. Works by Warhol:
From the Cochran Collection is a dynamic compilation designed
to introduce Warhol's contemporary Pop perspective on portraiture
and American culture. Drawn from the collection of Wes and Missy
Cochran of LeGrange, GA, and featuring 23 works spanning 1974
through his final series of 1986, Works by Warhol is the
first of three exhibitions on view at the Gibbes Museum of Art
this year that will reintroduce the genre of portraiture to the
Lowcountry. The exhibit will be on view through Dec. 7, 2003.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1930 the son of Slovak immigrants, Andy Warhol showed an early talent for drawing and painting. After high school, he went on to study commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie-Mellon). Upon graduation in 1949, Warhol moved to New York to work as a window display designer for Bonwit Teller and as a commercial illustrator for department stores and magazines such as Glamour, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Warhol soon became one of the most sought after and successful commercial artists working in New York in the 1950s.
The sixties brought a new dimension to Warhol's
creativity as he started painting everyday objects of mass production.
His depictions of Campbell Soup cans and Coke bottles catapulted
him into the limelight of the New York art scene and firmly established
him as both a major twentieth-century artist and a full-fledged
international celebrity. In a constant circle of "Art Imitating
Life" and "Life Imitating Art," Warhol based much
of his artwork on the celebrities of the day and became a media
icon himself.
From a jagged-edged collage of Mick Jagger to a pink, luminescent
man walking on the moon, Works by Warhol demonstrates the
artist's power to alter common perceptions about his subject matter.
The 23 works in the exhibition, an oil silkscreen, a drawing and
21 silkscreen prints, include a rare set of Warhol's last series
Cowboys and Indians (1986). Though not as well known as
his other work, this series is significant in its exploration
of the myths of the American West. Consisting of various calculated
juxtapositions, the series forces the viewer to reconsider the
concept of "hero" in the context of the American West
by portraying the significance of the silent heroes, America's
Native Americans. Other prints in the collection depict human
and cartoon figures of American Pop culture, including Mickey
Mouse and Donald Duck.
Developed and managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services of Kansas City, MO, the exhibition is part of a twelve-city national tour extending over a three-year period.
For more information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 843/722-2706 or on the web at (www.gibbes.com).
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