Andy Warhol and His World focuses on one of the greatest artistic
personalities of the 20th century. The exhibition sheds light on Andy Warhol
(1928–87), the artist as well as the man – a visionary figure whose life-style
and work strongly reflected the prosperous, postwar American society.
The exhibition opens with photographic documentation of the environment
that grew up around Andy Warhol’s studio the Factory and the Studio 54
nightclub in New York. The more than one hundred photos were taken by
many of the famous people surrounding him. They hang against a backdrop
of Warhol’s renowned wallpaper, Cow.
The first paintings encountered are a number of Warhol icons, with four of
Warhol’s self-portraits, dating from 1986, as their natural pivotal point. These
portraits of the artist show the most extreme sides of Warhol – the very
flashy side and the more shy one. The exhibition has been arranged so as
to surround him by his friends – by portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor and
Jacqueline Kennedy, and also of his imaginary friends, the crowned queens
– paintings inspired by his fascination with the upper class and the
glamourous.
Camilla Bjornvad, suggests the atmosphere of the Silver Factory. The effect
is enhanced by the sound of the New York poet John Giorno reading from
Warhol’s diaries. The main works exhibited in this and the adjoining
gallery show Andy Warhol’s fascination with violence and the results of it:
Elvis Presley with a gun, Car Crashes, Suicides, Electric Chairs and
Skulls. As counterpoint to these images, the playful Warhol is seen in the
installation Silver Clouds.
Louisiana possesses a unique collection of major Warhol works, and these,
along with other works in Danish private ownership, are presented in a
separate gallery. The exhibition is rounded off by a display of five of the most
significant examples of the Collaborations by Warhol and his friend and
colleague Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Films daily at 14.00, Wednesdays also at 19.00
As part of the exhibition, a cavalcade of Warhol’s own films from the 1960s,
as well as the two films from 1996 I Shot Andy Warhol by Mary Harron and
Basquiat by Julian Schnabel, will be shown in both the large and the small
Louisiana Cinema.
Louisiana Revy
In connection with the exhibition, the museum is publishing a catalogue in
the Louisiana Revy series, with a foreword by curator Steingrim Laursen and
featuring the following articles: I’ll Be Your Mirror by Bo Nilsson, curator of
the Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm; Shadows by Henrik Wivel, cultural
editor of Weekendavisen; and, The Surface of Nothing by Peter
Schepelern, Ph.d., senior lecturer at the Film and Media Department,
Copenhagen University.
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