Andy Warhol: Social Observer opens June 17 and runs through September 21, 2000 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. This
major exhibition examines an aspect of Warhols work and career that has never been fully explored in a museum setting: the depth and variety of the artists
critical observations of American society, and the ways in which his strategies of observation changed over the course of his career.
Andy Warhol: Social Observer focuses on what the artist looked at, how he looked at those subjects and, in certain situations, how he himself was perceived
by the society so inclined to keep its media trained on him. The exhibition is divided into seven sections: disguise, death and humanity, politics, advertising,
cover stories, celebrity, and symbolism. Organized thematically, the sections highlight Warhols engagement with what he perceived as the socially relevant in
art and life. An artist famous for having promoted himself as apathetic, vacuous, and superficial, Warhol will be seen as having been socially active and
politically concerned.
In addition to 86 paintings, prints, photographs, and one film, the exhibition features archival material borrowed from The Andy Warhol Museum. This includes
selections from the artists collection of photographs, newspaper articles, and promotional materials that figured prominently in the production of his art. One
of Warhols Time Capsules, compiled for posterity, will also be on view to provide a glimpse into a rarely examined aspect of his infatuation with the stuff of
popular culture.
Andy Warhol: Social Observer gathers together extraordinary examples of the artists journalistic reportage, including selections from his series devoted to
Electric Chairs, Car Crashes, Most Wanted Men, and Race Riots. The exhibition also goes beyond the early years associated with this Disaster imagery
to delve deeper into the complexity and range of Warhols production by featuring works that suggest new ways to understand this artist who is best known
as an originator of Pop art. Whereas many Warhol exhibitions have focused primarily on the artists early output, Social Observer takes stock of the full
expanse of his lifes work. By examining both the medium and the message, it offers fresh insights and makes significant advances in the scholarship of this
preeminent post-war American artist.
Andy Warhol: Social Observer will run concurrently with Robert Gwathmey: Master Painter, a retrospective of the work of the PAFA graduate and
mid-century social realist renowned for his role as an observer of Southern rural life. As a complementary pair, the exhibitions will examine the documentary
currents of social realism, which had its origins in the 1930s, and explore their connections to the photographic and mass-media based art-making techniques
employed by Warhol.
Andy Warhol: Social Observer is organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The exhibition is funded in part by a grant from the Mellon
Financial Corporation Foundation, with additional funding from the Womens Committee of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
A variety of adult and family educational programming-an artists panel, film series, lectures, and gallery talks-will accompany the exhibitions presentation, as
well as a fully illustrated catalogue authored by Assistant Curator Jonathan P. Binstock, the exhibitions organizer, with essay contributions by both Maurice
Berger, distinguished art historian and Senior Fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics of the New School for Social Research in New York City, and
Trevor Fairbrother, Deputy Director and John and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern Art at the Seattle Art Museum.
IMAGE:
Andy Warhol,
Daily News, 1968
Screenprint on paper,
Collection of Gagosian Gallery, New York
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS
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