Andy Warhol, Tate Modern

A new Warhol show to add to the list. I can imagine it must be difficult for galleries to curate new shows for this celebrity artist as his work is shown so often, and we have all seen his images endlessly reproduced throughout popular culture. The Tate this time has decided to make particular reference to Warhol’s involvement in queer culture and his second generation immigrant status, in order to link Warhol’s position in the art world to hot topics in contemporary discussion. The exhibition features many of his pop classics, but frames them within a history of Warhol’s experience of being a gay man in America at a time that it was illegal.

 It shows his films and photographs of sexualised male bodies, talks about his long term relationships and mentions his work with black and latinx trans models (albeit the information accompanying the work he made with the trans models conceded that his process wasn’t entirely empowering). The exhibition also highlights Warhol’s beginnings as a son of a Slovakian immigrant living in run-down, industrial Pittsburgh. In some ways these humble beginnings are what allowed him to shake up the art world, as conceptual art hadn’t yet been tackled by a working class kid who knew what sensibilities the public on mass were attracted to. 

However the Tate’s attempt at selling Warhol as shy and vulnerable doesn’t quite match the arrogant and materialistic artist that dominated pop culture from the 1960’s all the way up to his death in 1987. Warhol could be shallow, surrounding himself with celebrities and good looking people, even getting plastic surgery himself. He was obsessed with fame and money, bringing this into his art practice, he once said: “making money is art . . . good business is the best art”, the Tate didn’t make much reference to this side of the artist, and there were no dollar bill paintings. 

Beside one of Warhol’s expensive portraits, the information provided admitted his financial manager was finding wealthy clients to commission portraits but was forgiving in its explanation that these helped to finance some of Warhol’s more experimental works. Despite Warhol’s complicated character, his work isn’t bad by any means. His early works shown in the first few rooms are exciting, the huge and bold black screen prints onto bright painted backgrounds have a striking graphic sensibility that still looks fresh today. 

His use of repetition is his real skill, making reference to television and commercial design, new forces of visual language that had started to dominate American life at the time. His Death and Disaster series feels particularly relevant, making commentary on the media’s campaign of sharing images of suffering. Towards the end of his career, however, Warhol’s intoxication with success began to limit his creative expression, and the work began to lose its excitement. Endless portraits of different celebrities, all tackled in the exact same style, the downside of the rules of branding Warhol had married himself to. 

His rather boring and silly piece “Oxidation Painting” signalling an end to his inspiration. The Exhibition does end on a high note however, with a piece made in the last year of his life, “Sixty Last Suppers”. Black silkscreen prints of a reproduction of an old oil copy of the Renaissance painting - a copy of a copy, a source removed from the original once already, a proto-Pop piece itself. The painting is huge and the textured red background adds to the oppressive nature of it. The repetition of the image of Christ’s last meal before his execution speaks of a repeating death, an unending cycle and sums up Warhol’s continued themes of religion and death.