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Press Release – Andy Warhol: Withstanding The Test Of Time

ANDY WARHOL WITHSTANDING THE TEST OF TIME MARCH 12 – APRIL 11, 2015 

[no title] 1967 by Andy Warhol 1928-1987Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, FS II.25, 1967, Screenprint, 36 x 36 in., Edition of 250, Signed and numbered on verso

Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art will be exhibiting over 40 works by Andy Warhol. An exhibition of this magnitude has never been seen in Miami before.

The gallery, which specializing in contemporary masters, also exhibits newer contemporary artist. This exhibition shows how after 50 years, the works of Andy Warhol are still relevant to the world today, and how the new generation of artists are influenced by Warhol.

For more about Andy Warhol and his influence please read below.

To understand Andy Warhol and his art, one must first understand the art movement of the time, which came to be known as the POP art movement, and secondly the artist himself. Since 1943, American Modern art was dominated by Abstract Expressionism. Artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning believed that art was about the raw, physical mark, or “gesture” made when the artist applied paint to the canvas.

As a reaction to the dominance of Abstract Expressionism in art and a culture now driven by consumerism, the artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg represented a new generation of artist that wanted to reflect the reality of the humdrum life around them, which was modern America in the 1950s. These two artists reach new heights and broke new ground in their own individual styles. These two artists paved the way for Andy Warhol, however, while Johns and Rauschenberg chose objects so familiar that they were overlooked, Warhol would take images so popular that they already had mass appeal. He would be as bold and as brash as the advertisements and products surrounding him. He figured that one would interpret the icons and artifacts of the consumer boom in two ways. The idealized images of perfect people and faultless products could be seen as clichés or classicism. They can be viewed as a crass and exploitative picture or they can be viewed as celebrating the ideal of perfection.

To reveal this psychological tension, Warhol went to his mother’s place for lunch to think about a suitably “low” motif. When he arrived there he sat down and consumed the same meal he had been eating for the past 20 years – a slice of bread and a can of Campbell’s soup. The Campbell’s soup can would not only define him as an artist, but also define POP art and the movement’s overriding obsession with mass production and consumer culture.

His method of screenprinting images on either canvas or paper made him successful in removing almost all evidence of the artist’s presence from the paintings. The power of the work was in its dispassionate coldness, communicated by the apparent absence of the artist’s hand. The images of the paintings parodies the methods of modern advertising, which aims to infiltrate the public’s consciousness in order to indoctrinate and persuade by bombarding us with multiple exposures of the same image.

Warhol also challenges the idea that art should be original, as well as the tradition of the art market, which places value – financial and artistic – on perceived rarity and uniqueness. Warhol’s decision not to create his own images also furthers Marcel Duchamp’s idea that the art world falsely elevates artists to the role of all seeing geniuses.

This amazing, unselfish contribution to art can be seen in many artists today. The Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei paints his consumer driven influenced images on 1,000 year old antique artifacts, removing himself from his art and its message. The anonymous stencil artist Banksy removes himself from his work, not only by remaining anonymous, but also by using a pre-made stencil, which also removes the artistic hand in his artworks and his messages. Jeff Koons uses images of puppies, Popeye and tulips in high polished mirror finish to remove the hand of the artist.

There are many artists today from Koons to Ai Weiwei to Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Nate Lowman and countless others whose personas, works and ideas owe a debt of gratitude to their predecessor, Andy Warhol. For without Warhol, none of their great minds could have flourished.

Andy Warhol withstands the test of time.

ANDY WARHOL: WITHSTANDING THE TEST OF TIME 3/12/15 – 4/11/15

ANDY WARHOL: WITHSTANDING THE TEST OF TIME

An exhibition of works by Andy Warhol from the 1960s to 1980s on view at Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art

MARCH 12 – APRIL 11, 2015

OPENING RECEPTION     COLLECTOR’S  THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2015      

6PM-9PM

Andy Warhol        $ (Quadrant) FS II.284        1982

Andy Warhol $ (Quadrant) FS II.284 1982

$ (Quadrant) FS II.284

1982

Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board

40 x 32 in.

Edition of 60. Each print is unique.

This piece is signed and numbered in pencil.


About Andy Warhol:

He was one of the most enigmatic figures in American art. His work became the definitive expression of a culture obsessed with images. He was surrounded by a coterie of beautiful bohemians with names like Viva, Candy Darling, and Ultra Violet. He held endless drug- and sex-filled parties, through which he never stopped working. He single-handedly confounded the distinctions between high and low art. His films are pivotal in the formation of contemporary experimental art and pornography. He spent the final years of his life walking around the posh neighborhoods of New York with a plastic bag full of hundred dollar bills, buying jewelry and knick knacks. His name was Andy Warhol, and he changed the nature of art forever.

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh. He received his B.F.A. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, in 1949. That same year, he moved to New York, where he soon became successful as a commercial artist and illustrator. During the 1950s, Warhol’s drawings were published in Glamour and other magazines and displayed in department stores. He became known for his illustrations of I. Miller shoes. In 1952, the Hugo Gallery in New York presented a show of Warhol’s illustrations for Truman Capote’s writings.

During this time, Warhol had also been working on a series of pictures separate from the advertisements and illustrations. It was this work that he considered his serious artistic endeavor. Though the paintings retained much of the style of popular advertising, their motivation was just the opposite. The most famous of the paintings of this time are the thirty-two paintings of Campbell soup cans. With these paintings, and other work that reproduced Coca-Cola bottles, Superman comics, and other immediately recognizable popular images, Warhol was mirroring society’s obsessions. Where the main concern of advertising was to slip into the unconscious and unrecognizably evoke a feeling of desire, Warhol’s work was meant to make the viewer actually stop and look at the images that had become invisible in their familiarity. These ideas were similarly being dealt with by artists such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg — and came to be known as Pop Art.

Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Warhol produced work at an amazing rate. He embraced a mode of production similar to that taken on by the industries he was mimicking, and referred to his studio as “The Factory.” The Factory was not only a production center for Warhol’s paintings, silk-screens, and sculptures, but also a central point for the fast-paced high life of New York in the ’60s. Warhol’s obsession with fame, youth, and personality drew the most wild and interesting people to The Factory throughout the years. Among the regulars were Mick Jagger, Martha Graham, Lou Reed, and Truman Capote. For many, Warhol was a work of art in himself, reflecting back the basic desires of an consumerist American culture. He saw fame as the pinnacle of modern consumerism and reveled in it the way artists a hundred years before reveled in the western landscape. His oft-repeated statement that “every person will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” was an incredible insight into the growing commodification of everyday life.

By the mid-’60s, Warhol had become one of the most famous artists, in the world. He continued, however, to baffle the critics with his aggressively groundbreaking work. His paintings were primarily concerned with getting the viewer to look at something for longer than they otherwise would.

Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, Warhol produced hundreds of portraits, mostly in silk screen. His images of Liza Minnelli, Jimmy Carter, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Taylor, and Philip Johnson express a more subtle and expressionistic side of his work.

Following routine gall bladder surgery, Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987. After his burial in Pittsburgh, his friends and associates organized a memorial mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York that was attended by more than 2,000 people.

Ahol Sniffs Glue – PINK Exhibit

AHOL SNIFFS GLUE PINK EXHIBIT FOR BREAST CANCER AWARENESSAhol Ribbon

OCTOBER IS BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH

Together with the artist, Ahol Sniffs Glue, Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art would like to honor the memories of Martha C. Garcia (Ahol’s mom) and Marsha Serfer (Gregg’s wife’s mom) as well as the other women whose lives and families hae been affected by breast cancer.

All money from the sales of Ahol’s artwork will be donated to the Braman Family Breast Cancer Institute at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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