Snap! "YOU ARE HERE" Presents "All About Warhol"
May 10 - June 14, 2015 - Mr. and Mrs. Chesley G. Magruder Gallery I
Warhol Flowers III
All About Warhol presents a comprehensive look at the highly personal work of photographers William John Kennedy, Christopher Makos and Paul Solberg – the collaboration of the latter two known as the Hilton Brothers – and their relationship with Andy Warhol.
Even before Warhol could be labeled the consummate appropriation artist, William John Kennedy’s remarkable portraits of the artist were already documenting the process at a time prior to Pop Art becoming the new canon.
Kennedy, by embedding Warhol in his own work in each of the intimate portraits he took of the artist, reveals a rare insightful glimpse of Warhol, that transcends the artist’s carefully crafted ‘persona’ with its deadpan blankness, sunglasses and obvious wig. Kennedy’s images of Warhol and the beginnings of the fabled Silver Factory capture the zeitgeist of New York’s art scene in the early 1960s with a deft narrative vision. After nearly half a century in storage, a selection of the nearly forgotten images were published for the first time in 2010.
The man Andy Warhol called ‘the most modern photographer in America,’ Christopher Makos, taught the artist how to use his first camera. Makos and Warhol shared a decade long intimate friendship during which the photographer created a behind-the-scenes, in-depth visual record of the artist at the zenith of his career and before his untimely death in 1987.
The images of Andy Warhol in The Hilton Brothers’ Andy Dandy 5 and Andy Dandy 4 are the result of a 1981 collaboration between Makos and Warhol through which unexpected combinations of simple elements are used to explore identity. Warhol slightly altered his appearance with makeup and a wig, otherwise remaining in his street clothes. Warhol said, “I’m not trying to look beautiful like Elizabeth Taylor, I’m trying to show what it feels like to be beautiful like Elizabeth Taylor.” The series of images created as a collaboration between the artist and the photographer and under Warhol’s direction pay tribute to photographer Man Ray and his portraits of artist Marcel Duchamp and his alter-ego Rrose Selavy a generation earlier.
All About Warhol also features portraits of the coterie of luminaries who over the years worked and visited the Factory, Warhol’s legendary studio, and includes superstar Ultra Violet, Taylor Mead, Pedro Almodovar Man Ray, Tom Ford, Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Steve Tyler, Georgia O’Keefe, Dylan McDermott, Liza Minnelli, Christopher Reeve and OJ Simpson.
This exhibition is presented by Snap! Orlando as part of its ongoing partnership with the Orlando Museum of Art. Snap! Orlando’s city/statewide and month-long event, YOU ARE HERE, takes place May 1 through May 31, 2015 in 25 locations throughout the city of Orlando. YOU ARE HERE is comprised of exhibitions, lectures, experimental media and workshops that compel audiences to celebrate place and community building, while showcasing the energized core of Orlando’s thriving arts and culture movement. For more information, please visit snapyouarehere.com.