Quickly To The Whitney, And Back Again To San Francisco, Chicago For Andy Warhol Beyond Superstardom

Warhol’s depiction of Superman is based on a drawing by Kurt Schaffenberger from the comic Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane (April 1961). Warhol’s decision to use Superman as a subject may offer a biting commentary on the heroic machismo associated with Abstract Expressionist “action” painting, or a queer reading of the Man of Steel, or both. Warhol displayed Superman and four other paintings shortly after they were made in a window display at the Bonwit Teller department store (below), where he and many other artists produced window displays.

“Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?”

Andy Warhol’s pithy quotes, often tongue-in-cheek, outright brazen, or wickedly understated, have become part of our lexicon. Such adages are as ubiquitous as his portraits and repeated patterns. But don’t undermine the proliferation of his art and its inescapable influence on so many aspects of today’s life beyond art itself.

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s “Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again” featuring more than 350 works on display is the largest retrospective of Warhol’s abounding career in nearly 30 years. It’s a deep dive into an artist who is replete with intrigue and astonishment more than three decades after his death in 1987.

Painfully shy and private, despite his very open and flamboyant life among both established celebrities and those he propelled into fame, Warhol is fodder for ongoing study and appreciation.

If you think you saw everything at “Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again,” think again. Ponder this: his art and life are a series of images and experiences that change as they repeat themselves and as you repeatedly shift perspective.

“There is punch in Warhol’s work, there’s mystery, and it’s not easy to know what’s going on,” said Donna De Salvo, the Whitney’s deputy director for international initiatives and senior curator, who organized the exhibition with Christie Mitchell and Mark Loiacono.

If you haven’t been, you have until March 31 to view both instantly recognizable works that have been on display, or at least repurposed for everything from museum quality pieces sold at the gift shop to disposable fast fashion boasting his iconic images and sayings, as well as material shared publicly for the first time. Moreover, newly revealed biographical context enables an enhanced understanding of the master and his sweeping body of work.

The exhibition travels to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (May 18-Sept. 2,) and the Art Institute of Chicago (Oct. 20-Jan. 26, 2020). Tickets for the last days at the Whitney are available online.

“I think everybody should like everybody.”

Even in the 21^st century, there are people who judge based on gender identity, sexuality, faith, and other components of our human identity. Few artists embraced more eclectic subjects, from the world’s most prominent citizens to those cast aside by a callous society. The Pop Art giant lived much of his life under his own scrutiny, holding sacred details of personal life.

“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface; of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.”

Perhaps the most blatantly inaccurate self-assessment, Warhol’s work is layered with complexity that requires some understanding of his lifestyle and heritage.

I gazed and wept and returned again and again to the awe-inspiring 25-foot long “Camouflage Last Supper,” one of Warhol’s final and most profound works. The sweeping canvas dominates a sprawling wall on the fifth floor of the Whitney. The Brobdingnag acrylic and silkscreen mural powerfully depicts the artist’s struggle with religion and persona.

“Camouflage Last Supper” is created with a colossal photo print of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic 15th-century mural and a green-and-brown camouflage fabric swatch pattern. The emotionally charged masterpiece was completed in 1986 as the AIDS crisis annihilated the New York City gay community and art world. Moreover, it’s a deeply intimate revelation of the artist’s lifelong discord as a gay man and a Byzantine Catholic.

“For me, the most potent stuff is the later work,” De Salvo said. “Some of it is mystifying, but it’s still asking us questions. It feels as though it makes Warhol a live issue again.”

Few outside of this tight-knit religious community were aware that faith played a critical role in his daily existence as it seemed to be at odds with the Warhol people think they knew. His parents were from an ethnic group known Ruthenians, born in a village in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, at the northern border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

When he wasn’t galavanting with supermodels, rock stars, drag queens, and social outcasts, he could be found almost every day at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on the Upper East Side. He slinked into back of the church on Sundays for fear of being spotted, and slipped out before Holy Communion to shroud his identity. He kept a crucifix shrine by his bedside, wore a concealed cross, and carried a rosary in his pocket.

Moreover, many Warhol fans were unaware of his hushed philanthropy, which included funding a soup kitchen operated by the (Episcopal) Church of the Heavenly Rest on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He volunteered at the soup kitchen and sent his nephew to seminary to become a priest.