ANDY WARHOL’S LONG SHADOW
Gagosian presents Andy Warhol’s Long Shadow, a exhibition featuring some artist including Derrick Adams, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Urs Fischer, Nan Goldin, Douglas Gordon, Alex Israel, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Sterling Ruby, and Zeng Fanzhi.
March 25 – May 11, 2024
Warhol was one of the most prolific artists of the twentieth century, and his work’s staying power has been augmented by its enormous diversity. Over the course of four decades, he continually reinvented his practice, moving from his intimate drawings of the 1950s to iconic silkscreened Pop paintings of celebrities, consumer goods, and disasters in the 1960s; portraits of the social elite in the 1970s; and photographs, television shows, and collaborative projects in the 1980s.
Warhol’s paintings Silver Liz [Studio Type] (1963), Mao (1973), and Marilyn Monroe (1979), and his Screen Test film of Donyale Luna (1965–66), redefined portraiture in relation to contemporary style, power, and celebrity. In addition, Brillo Box (1964) and Dollar Sign (1981) brought commercial design and financial icons into the realm of fine art, while his Flowers (1964) and Shadows series (1978–79) introduced new modes of abstraction.
The new styles of representation that Warhol developed and his challenging of gender norms both resonate with the thematic centrality of identity, glamour, and performance to photographs by Nan Goldin, which here include Ivy in opera gloves, Boston (1972). Jean-Michel Basquiat’s double portrait of himself with Warhol, Dos Cabezas (1982), was made shortly after Basquiat first met his idol, while Sweet Pungent (1984–85) is one of more than 160 paintings on which the pair collaborated—it also saw Warhol return to painting by hand.
As often as Warhol experimented with new art-making strategies, he also reimagined his public persona through techniques of doubling, masking, and recording. In his Polaroid Self-Portrait in Fright Wig (1986), he alters his appearance by donning silver wig and sunglasses, also obscuring his features in shadow.
Zeng Fanzhi’s double portrait of himself and Warhol in Fly (2000) imagines the two artists—their features hidden behind identical masks—standing in a field of flowers, as two jets fly overhead. A new painting by Takashi Murakami echoes Warhol’s Flowers by abstracting from nature to create an instantly recognizable form, while Sky (2012) by Alex Israel recalls the Pop artist’s embrace of artificiality.
Cool Down Bench (RWB) (2023) by Derrick Adams embraces popular culture, Untitled (2010) by Richard Prince employs a humor conversant with Warhol’s, and Sterling Ruby’s BC (4833) (2014) is inspired in part by Warhol’s Rorschach paintings. Through these works, Andy Warhol’s Long Shadow brings to light unexpected juxtapositions with artists whose work “thinks” through, with, and beyond Warhol’s oeuvre, demonstrating its enduring relevance.