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Posts tagged ‘Andy Warhol’
April 29, 2015  |  Artists, Collection & Exhibitions
Serial & Singular: Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans

The 32 canvases that make up Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, a landmark in MoMA’s collection, are usually shown in a grid arranged in four rows of eight. For space reasons, this has typically been the most expedient way to exhibit them.

Andy Warhol. Campbell’s Soup Cans. 1962. Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, each canvas: 20 x 16" (50.8 x 40.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Partial gift of Irving Blum. Additional funding provided by Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest, gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund, gift of Nina and Gordon Bunshaft in honor of Henry Moore, Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, Philip Johnson Fund, Frances R. Keech Bequest, gift of Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, and Florence B. Wesley Bequest (all by exchange), 1996. ©2015 Andy Warhol Foundation/ARS, NY/TM Licensed by Campbell's Soup Co. All rights reserved

Andy Warhol. Campbell’s Soup Cans. 1962. Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, each canvas: 20 x 16″ (50.8 x 40.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Partial gift of Irving Blum. Additional funding provided by Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest, gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund, gift of Nina and Gordon Bunshaft in honor of Henry Moore, Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, Philip Johnson Fund, Frances R. Keech Bequest, gift of Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, and Florence B. Wesley Bequest (all by exchange), 1996. ©2015 Andy Warhol Foundation/ARS, NY/TM Licensed by Campbell’s Soup Co. All rights reserved

But in the Museum’s current exhibition, Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967, for the first time at MoMA, and only the fourth time anywhere, they are being presented in a single line. Also for this occasion, the outer frames and Plexiglas barriers that usually cover the canvases have been removed, and the works have been propped on ledges.  The paintings can be perused like groceries lining supermarket shelves.

Installation view of Andy Warhol: Campbell's Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967 at The Museum of Modern Art, April 25–October 12, 2015. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2015 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Installation view of Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967 at The Museum of Modern Art, April 25–October 12, 2015. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2015 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Detail from Campbell’s Soup Cans. © 2015 Andy Warhol Foundation/ ARS, NY/TM Licensed by Campbell's Soup Co. All rights reserved

Detail from Campbell’s Soup Cans

This presentation transforms our perception of the iconic series. When installed in a grid, the canvases can all be seen from a single vantage point. They become a tight unit of seemingly identical images that the eye takes in at once, like wallpaper. But when they are all in a single line at eye-level, wrapping around the gallery walls, it seems as if they could extend almost endlessly, and we are invited to slowly consider the paintings one by one. As we look, unexpected inconsistencies among these hand-painted canvases begin to emerge: the red paint sometimes feels closer to orange, there are variations in the black shadows on the silver tops, one soup can is missing a gold band, the fleur-de-lis stamped on the bottom of each varies…

This installation of Campbell’s Soup Cans was designed to recall the first time they were ever exhibited at the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1962. Focusing on artists primarily from New York and Los Angeles, Ferus mounted a number of significant exhibitions in the 1960s, including the 1962 Soup Cans exhibition, which was Warhol’s first solo exhibition of paintings and is also considered the first Pop art exhibition on the west coast.

Andy Warhol at his 1342 Lexington Avenue studio with Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962. Collection The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

Andy Warhol at his 1342 Lexington Avenue studio with Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962. Collection The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh

Ferus director Irving Blum offered the show to Warhol, who was still relatively unknown as a painter, after he first saw six soup-can canvases in 1961 while visiting Warhol’s apartment on Lexington Avenue that doubled as a studio. (Blum went to see Warhol on the suggestion of Ivan Karp, associate director at the Leo Castelli gallery and an early and dedicated champion of Pop art). “…I walked down a corridor,” Blum later described, “and there were paintings of soup cans on the floor, leaning against the wall. I said, ‘Andy, what are those?’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m doing these now.’ And I said, ‘Why more than one?’… He said, ‘I’m going to do 32.’ I simply couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Why 32?’ He said, ‘There are 32 varieties.’” (Interview with Peter M. Brant, Interview Magazine, April 19, 2012)

After Warhol completed the canvases and sent them to Los Angeles (he was not able to get to L.A. to see the show himself), Blum hung them and placed a ledge beneath them because he was having difficulty making the paintings appear level. Later, when asked about this installation, Blum said, “Cans sit on shelves. Why not?” (Interview Magazine, 2012)

During the run of the exhibition, Blum sold five of the paintings, mostly to his friends, including the actor Dennis Hopper. But before the show was over, he changed his mind—he felt they should remain in a group. Once he managed to reclaim the works, he paid Warhol $1,000 for them in installments over a year (Kirk Varnedoe in Heiner Bastian, Andy Warhol, 2001).

Installation view, Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, 1962, with Campbell’s Soup Cans. Photograph: Seymour Rosen. © SPACES—Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments

Installation view, Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, 1962, with Campbell’s Soup Cans. Photograph: Seymour Rosen. © SPACES—Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments

Blum hoped that eventually the paintings would find a home at a major museum, and in 1996, thanks to an initiative spearheaded by Kirk Varnedoe, former Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, the paintings were acquired by MoMA as a partial gift of Irving Blum, and a partial purchase.

The current exhibition presents the soup-can paintings together with a selection of works Warhol made in the years before and after he completed them, highlighting their pivotal position in the artist’s career. They were made during the moment when Warhol was trying to transform himself from a commercial artist to a fine artist, right before he became a beacon of Pop art in the 1960s. The Campbell’s Soup Cans canvases are among Warhol’s earliest paintings based on American consumer goods, and some of his first works that feature serial images.

The canvases are also are among his last hand-painted works. Soon after completing them, he discovered silkscreen, the medium with which he is most closely associated. Whereas the soup-can paintings had been handcrafted to look as though they were mechanically produced, silkscreen actually was a mechanical—and commercial—process. It enabled Warhol to make a practically limitless number of precise repetitions and variations of his key subjects.

Installation view of Andy Warhol: Campbell's Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967 at The Museum of Modern Art, April 25–October 12, 2015. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2015 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Shown:  Andy Warhol. Marilyn Monroe. 1967. Portfolio of 10 screenprints, each composition and sheet: 36 x 36″ (91.5 x 91.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art. Publisher: Factory Additions, New York. Printer: Aetna Silkscreen Products Inc., New York. Edition: 250. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. David Whitney, 1968. © 2015 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Installation view of Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967 at The Museum of Modern Art, April 25–October 12, 2015. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2015 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Shown:
Andy Warhol. Marilyn Monroe. 1967. Portfolio of 10 screenprints, each composition and sheet: 36 x 36″ (91.5 x 91.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art. Publisher: Factory Additions, New York. Printer: Aetna Silkscreen Products Inc., New York. Edition: 250. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. David Whitney, 1968. © 2015 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

He once explained his preference for silk-screening: “I find it easier to use a screen. This way, I don’t have to work on my objects at all. One of my assistants or anyone else, for that matter, can reproduce the design as well as I could” (Andy Warhol in Kaspar König, Andy Warhol, 1968).

Because we so often think of the Warhol who wanted to be a machine, rapidly turning out silkscreens, films, and photographs, it’s almost counterintuitive to think of him with brush in hand. Campbell’s Soup Cans holds a unique place in Warhol’s body of work: they are at once serial and singular, have a mechanical look, but were made manually, and in this exhibition—as they were at Ferus in 1962—they are both paintings on a wall, and cans on a shelf.

April 24, 2015  |  Five for Friday
Five for Friday: Yes We Can! (or Nice Cans, or It’s in the Can)

Five for Friday, written by a variety of MoMA staff members, is our attempt to spotlight some of the compelling, charming, and downright curious works in the Museum’s rich collection.

The exhibition <a href="http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1572" target=blank">Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967</a> opens tomorrow (April 25), and as the title implies, the show’s focal point is Warhol’s iconic 1962 <a href="http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/57/1098" target=blank">suite of 32 paintings</a> of, well, Campbell’s Soup cans.

February 20, 2015  |  Artists, Collection & Exhibitions
Trains and Cars: A Gallery Tour with The Forever Now artist Joe Bradley

In conjunction with the exhibition The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, we invited several artists from the show to walk us through MoMA’s permanent collection galleries and discuss a few artworks. Revisiting key pieces in the Museum’s collection with these artists has truly given me a fresh perspective on the works themselves and their significance today.

July 23, 2014  |  Film
Tiger Morse: Fashion Guru and Andy Warhol Star
Tiger Morse (Reel 14 of ***). 1963. USA. Directed by Andy Warhol. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Image courtesy of The Andy Warhol Film Project, Whitney Museum of American Art

Tiger Morse (Reel 14 of ***). 1967. USA. Directed by Andy Warhol. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Image courtesy of The Andy Warhol Film Project, Whitney Museum of American Art

I have a vague recollection of attending a classmate’s birthday party when I was about six or seven and in the gift bag there was a paper dress perfectly sized to fit me! The dress was neatly folded in a flat plastic package; it was a simple, A-line, sleeveless shift dress with brightly colored circles. I can’t recall the manufacturer, but the material was something like a thick, stretchy paper towel.

May 1, 2014  |  Artists, MoMA Stores
Now Available at the MoMA Stores: UNIQLO at MoMA Art-Inspired Accessories

UNIQLO has had a long and fruitful relationship with MoMA, and through UNIQLO Free Friday Nights has helped advance the Museum’s mission by making art and design accessible to everyone. To celebrate its continued support of MoMA, this spring UNIQLO unveiled UNIQLO at MoMA, an assortment of T-shirts, tote bags, bandanas, and socks that feature artwork by world-renowned artists, including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Jackson Pollock, and Ryan McGinness.

February 14, 2013  |  Five for Friday
Five for Valentine’s Day: A Kiss Is Just a Kiss

To get everyone in the mood for today’s amorous holiday, I’ve selected some of the best kisses from MoMA’s collection. What’s your favorite?

September 29, 2011  |  Artists, Collection & Exhibitions, Film
Salvador Dalí Has Left the Building

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. Un Chien andalou. 1928. France. 35mm print, black and white, silent, approx. 16 min. Gift of Luis Buñuel

Between 1964 and 1966 Andy Warhol commenced an ambitious project in which he would photograph, using 16mm motion picture film, his Factory superstars, art world luminaries, underground celebrities, fashionistas, rock and roll gods, bold-faced Hollywood names, drag queens, and aimless teenagers who gravitated to the avant garde, Pop art world of New York in the mid-1960s.

February 28, 2011  |  Collection & Exhibitions
Empire Tweets Back

Andy Warhol. Empire. 1964. 16mm film transferred to video (black and white, silent), 8 hours 5 min. at 16 frames per second. Original film elements preserved by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. © 2011 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

As far as films go, it’s one of those that everyone talks about, but few get around to actually seeing. I’m talking about Andy Warhol’s Empire, his infamous 1964 film that consists of a single, stationary eight-hour view of the Empire State Building at night. Better yet: the film was shot at 24 frames per second and is projected at 16—which means that this epically-long stationary shot of the Empire State is actually seen in slow motion. Though heralded conceptually, it has been repeatedly described as unwatchable. Which is exactly why I wanted to see it. All eight hours of it.

Warhol Is Boring, and That’s Great

“I like boring things.” – Andy Warhol

As we prepared for the Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures exhibition, we struggled with how to create an online experience for the exhibition. Our colleagues in Graphic Design came up with a simple and elegant idea: a site where people could submit their own “screen tests” in the style of Warhol’s iconic works, and view others’ submissions. The site is live at MoMA.org/screentests.

December 17, 2010  |  Artists, Collection & Exhibitions, Film
Preserving Warhol’s Films

Installation view of Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures at The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Left to right, Screen Test: Susan Sontag (1964), Screen Test: Dennis Hopper (1964), Screen Test: Kathe Dees (1964), Screen Test: Edie Sedgwick (1965), Kiss (1963–64), Screen Test: Lou Reed (1966), Screen Test: Kyoko Kishida (1964), Screen Test: Baby Jane Holzer (1964), and Screen Test: Donyale Luna (1964). © 2010 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Photo: Jason Mandella

The exhibition Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures marks the continuation of the long-term effort to preserve one of the artist’s most important bodies of work. Before his death in 1987, Warhol stipulated that his works should be cared for by The Museum of Modern Art, and in 1997 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts completed the donation of the surviving 4,000 reels of original footage and print materials.