Joburg goes pop
ANDY WARHOL: WITS HOSTS THE MASTER OF SILKSCREENS
See works that changed art forever.
When you’re from a small town, there’s nothing more thrilling than telling people: “I met her in Bankside, London, close to the river Thames”.
The story almost makes me feel like a star like Humphrey Bogart, with a life filled with international love affairs.
But our meeting wasn’t that intimate. Bogart would have met her in a secluded bar where they can stare into each other’s eyes for hours.
Maybe I have an exhibitionist side I wasn’t aware of because I think I liked our first meeting the way it happened. The weather was drab, there were long lines of people and their loud ooohs and ahhhs coupled with excited chatter in too many languages to recall.
None of it mattered, of course, because after scouting around the Tate Modern for a while, I finally saw her. The lines on her face and that famous smile.
Marilyn Diptych – better known as Marilyn Monroe – a subject in many of Andy Warhol’s works, has a way of hitting you the first time you see it. I was just lucky that my first introduction to his work was his famous homage to Monroe. It’s the simplicity of it, or maybe that it speaks to millennials like myself who use pop culture and its references every day. But it was a special moment of frisson.
It’s not every day that you get to experience the leader of the pop art movement’s work. Hell, it’s not every day you get to experience the work of somebody who changed art in its entirety. We have great art in Africa, but sometimes we miss out on the work of the masters.
But since last year, there’s been a rustle in the grass.
Last July, Standard Bank Gallery hosted Henri Matisse’s Rhythm and Meaning exhibition, the first full-scale showcase of the French modernist’s work in Africa.
This month, the Wits Art Museum (WAM) is breaking from the tradition of featuring predominately African exhibitions by hosting Warhol Unscreened: Artworks from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Collection.
Warhol’s work is coming to South Africa and it’s time to wrap your head around pop art – and the beauty of its explosive vibrancy, banality, excitement and unique place in the world.
It also creates incredibly important references for us to give more appreciation to the work of people like Brett Murray and even Anton Kannemeyer.
Why Warhol?
The exhibition will comprise more than 80 of Warhol’s major screen prints – each likely to be as thrilling as the next.
While WAM’s commitment to local and African art has never wavered, the university is hosting the exhibition thanks to an unprecedented opportunity to provide access to the work of one of 20th Century Western art’s biggest anti-establishment artists.
Your feelings toward Donald Trump aside, The Bank of America Merrill Lynch Collection and
We recognise the important contribution that organisations like Wam make to society. Richard Gush Country executive for Merrill Lynch South Africa
the bank is bringing the exhibition to WAM at no cost as part of its Art in Our Communities programme. The firm is supporting an educational programme that includes bus sponsorship for under-resourced schools, a publication for schoolchildren and support of the museum’s Teen_ Connect workshops.
Warhol is still revered because he managed to collapse the boundaries between high art and pop culture, art and business and bricked the foundation for myriads of artists who started using unique visuals in their work.
It showed the world that art is more than paint or sculpture. Warhol was one of the first artists to bring silkscreen printing to fine art. The marriage is still prevalent today, even in South Africa where we use the same visual cues created by Warhol.
Richard Gush, country executive for Merrill Lynch South Africa, says: “We recognise the important contribution that organisations like WAM make to society, both in terms of the stimulus they offer the local economy and the cultural enrichment they provide.”
There’s a number of walkabouts as well as art-making opportunities during the exhibition’s run.
What is going to set Warhol’s exhibition apart is the fact that it’s not commercial, but also not meant to be stuffy like a museum exhibition. It’s a visual experiment and it’s up to you to be surprised by every print you encounter.