Andy Warhol. Pop art in Vienna
We know Warhol in various manifestations - as a man who perfectly sensed the trends of his time and was able to transform them into easily comprehensible visual images, as a master who gave the masses an exclusive status, as the founder of not just an art studio, but the very factory of art. A man who mocked conventionality with the same conventionality. The man who became the king of pop art. It's all Andy Warhol.
Warhol, unlike the major authors, sought fame and fortune from the very beginning of his career path. And we cannot deny it - he achieved his goal. Andrew Warhol's parents - the artist's real name - had nothing to do with art: his father was a laborer and his mother was a window washer. They even spoke little English. The upbringing of their four children was extremely difficult and their main support was Christianity and belief in the American dream. Little Andrew Warhol trusted his parents and grew up a very devout child. He grew up as a sickly, weak, and uncommunicative young man, and during his illness, his mother would buy him colouring books, comic books, albums, and pictures of famous actors to cheer him up. These images were stored in little Andrew's mind, and as he grew older, he began to put them on paper. His parents, noticing his talent for drawing, began to save up money to pay for their son's higher education. In his final years at university, having already changed his name to Warhol, Andy studied drawing and design. He chose a pseudo-inspired, semi-cartoonish style which he continued to use after his studies, achieving success in commercial design.
During those years Warhol could already make enough money, but his name was only known in small circles, and several attempts to exhibit in large and well-known galleries failed. This made the artist unhappy. Even his friends Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, who had also started out as illustrators, had become celebrities. Warhol was jealous. It's worth noting that, in many ways, it was jealousy that helped him become the person we know him today. To become famous, you had to meet the demands of the crowd. The author noticed that people's interests began to shift from expressionism to the commonplace objects and details from pop culture. In the late fifties Andy presented a series of works to the public, made with all the necessary criteria to appeal to the audience of that time.
Those were simple images of everyday things: hoovers, cans, bottles, televisions and much more. Thus Warhol practically carved out a niche for himself, and by the early sixties he was already using Campbell's soup cans, Coca-Cola, the dollar sign and Marilyn Monroe, which had become a permanent part of his work.
Andy Warhol was a man of great contrasts. On the one hand a bright, talented artist, on the other hand a secretive, barely noticeable personality. It is these two sides of his personality that have been the focus of the exhibition 'Andy Warhol exhibits' at Vienna's Museum of Modern Art for several months now. The exhibition focuses on expanding the artist's public image. The exhibition will feature works from his first exhibition "Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote" from 1952. These works show Warhol's early interest in iconographically well-defined series, as well as his interpretation of the performance theme of gender.
Warhol views his work in the context of presentation. It is not only his art that is important to him, but also the dramaturgy associated with it. He increasingly wondered how to perfectly stage his series of works. The exhibition focuses on his exhibition practice from the 1960s to the 1980s.
The second exhibition "Defrosting the Icebox" arose in collaboration with the Viennese Museum of Art History and the World Museum of Vienna.
In 1969 Warhol curated a travelling exhibition "Raid The Icebox 1 with Andy Warhol" consisting of exhibits and works from the Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design. The exhibition did not present his own work, but was nevertheless innovative in terms of its presentation strategy, breaking the stereotypes of traditional museum standards: instead of prioritising fine art (painting, sculpture, drawing, photography or drawings), Warhol prioritised applied art (art involved in the creation of everyday objects).
Instead of guiding the visitor through the exhibition according to chronology, medium or style of creative expression, he presented the objects in a historically random and non-hierarchical order.
The repository has become an exhibition, the almost forgotten has moved into the spotlight. This principle is now followed by the exhibition "Defrosting the Icebox" which, following Warhol's example, shows unusual exhibits from the repositories of the Ancient Art Collection and the World Museum of Vienna.
