Major retrospective at Tate Modern with a new look at the extraordinary life and work of Andy Warhol, the pop art superstar.
Hang him on my wall
by Alexa DalbyA new exhibition at the Tate Modern presents a new take on Andy Warhol, the hugely influential innovator and seminal artist of the Pop Art and music movement in the 1960s.
This new exhibition at the Tate Modern casts new light on Warhol’s unique take on 20th century culture, featuring over 100 works from his remarkable career. Alongside the the artworks are three of his trademark wigs shown for the first time in the UK.
Another first is Warhol’s 10-metre wide canvas ‘Sixty Last Suppers’, shown in the UK for the first time. Created a few months before his death, it is a poignant meditation on faith, death, immortality and the afterlife.
One room of the exhibition is devoted to ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’, over 250 portraits of New York’s black and Latino drag queens and trans women, the largest presentation of the series ever shown in the UK.
Video installations include a studio with wraparound sound and psychedelic images of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable 1966, featuring Nico and Velvet Underground,the band Warhol created with Lou Reed and John Cale.
And Silver Clouds 1966 is a mesmerising room filled with floating silver balloon pillows, tantalisingly weightless, to stimulate playful interaction.
Popularly radical and radically popular, Warhol was an artist who reimagined what art could be in an age of immense social, political and technological change.? Like Warhol himself, the exhibition is surprising, fresh and unexpected.
Andy Warhol exhibition is at the Tate Modern , London, until 15 November 2020
