Forget everything you know about Andy Warhol. The late artist and pop culture icon is being honored by The Whitney Museum in New York City with a complete retrospective of his work in an exhibition called “Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again”.
While most people are only familiar with Andy Warhol’s pop art phase, characterized by pieces featuring Marilyn Monroe and more mundane iconography like Campbell’s soup cans, this “exhibition positions Warhol’s career as a continuum, demonstrating that he didn’t slow down after surviving the assassination attempt that nearly took his life in 1968, but entered into a period of intense experimentation.”
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Andy filming “Chelsea Girls” in 1966
Warhol has been a popular fashion reference recently, most notably in Raf Simons’ collections for Calvin Klein, but this is the first retrospective of his artwork in the U.S. since 1989. Certainly not a one trick pony, the exhibit spans his four decades-long career. People will be surprised and delighted to see pieces from Warhol’s stint as a commercial illustrator in the 1950’s, his pop art masterpieces from the 60’s, his experimental film projects from the 70’s and his abstract images of the 80’s.
“Perhaps more than any artist before or since, Andy Warhol understood America’s defining twin desires fore innovation and conformity, public visibility and absolute privacy,” notes Donna De Salvo, one of the exhibit’s senior curators. “He transformed these contradictory impulses into a completely original art that, I believe, has profoundly influenced how we see and think about the world now.”
“Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again” is open for general admission starting on November 12.