Miami Art Museum

Miami, FL

305-375-3000

http://www.miamiartmuseum.org



 

About Face: Andy Warhol Portraits

 

Andy Warhol brought portraiture back into focus in the 1960s when he began creating iconic Pop art paintings of celebrities. These famous faces, ranging from Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to later portraits of Deborah Harry, Liza Minnelli and Warhol himself, are now showing in "About Face: Andy Warhol Portraits."

Miami is one of only two cities to host this extraordinary show, which was organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum, and curated by Nicholas Baume, Emily Hall Tremaine Curator of Contemporary Art, Wadsworth Atheneum. Warhol's work is on view at Miami Art Museum from March 23 through June 4, 2000.

Andy Warhol harnessed the mass media to create a "factory" of glamour, beauty and fame. Auditioning and assembling his own stable of "superstars" for projects, he exploited his own prophecy that "in the future everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes."

As a whole, Warhol's portraits provide a fascinating account of his personal and artistic circle, as well as a chronicle of many of the most talented, best known and wealthiest public figures of the period. Warhol's celebrated subjects ranged from tyrants, tycoons and Hollywood movie stars to rock stars, fashion designers and drag queens of the New York City nightlife of the 1970s and 1980s.

Unusual highlights of the show include rare portrait films on view to the public for the first time in this exhibition, along with special screenings of such innovative Warhol films as Chelsea Girls and Sleep. An array of commissioned portraits is presented on a wall covered with Warhol's own stunning self-portrait wallpaper, and in Miami, the exhibition includes a few key loans of rarely seen Warhol works from South Florida collections.

The more than 70 works in the show include paintings, prints, photography, video and film, and span Warhol's entire career from the 1950s to the 1980s. The exhibition features celebrity portraits, commissioned portraits, self-portraits, excerpts from his celebrity journal Interview magazine and clips from Andy Warhol's TV.

"About Face: Andy Warhol Portraits" is sponsored by Philip Morris Companies Inc.

Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional source by visiting the sub-index page for the Miami Art Museum in Resource Library Magazine

You may also enjoy our other articles concerning 20th Century American Portraiture and Figurative Art.

For further biographical information please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line to see enlargements.

rev. 1/6/11


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