As I usually do when I have a free Sunday afternoon, I headed out to the Cantor Gallery on Stanford campus today. Not because there was anything I particularly wanted to see, but because it's free and offers nice opportunities to get some walking done, and enjoy the fresh air. It also has a new central exhibition every few months, and I discovered today that they were hosting an exhibition of photography by Andy Warhol.
I don't feel I know that much about Warhol, despite a profile about him in Paradox Press's Big Book of Weirdoes from the 90s, so I gamely went to check it out. It's a review of the different themes and subject matter he took photos of throughout the last decade of his life, from the celebrity work he's known for to people in the gay community and the Studio 54 crowd, among others.
The Cantor Gallery actually acquired the contact sheets and negatives from the Warhol Foundation, so this is the first time a lot of these pictures are being displayed, which made it more interesting.
In any case, I was struck by a thought as I looked at the celebrity photos he took and that were in his interview magazine. Among the shots of Liza Minnelli, Nancy Reagan and Grace Jones, there was a photo of Michael Jackson as a rather young man, on which Warhol had traced lines following the contours of his face.
Looking at it, and the pictures around it, it struck me that it was similar to the famous Campbell's Soup painting, in that these celebrities are also brands and iconography that the public recognizes and responds to in specific ways. The silkscreen prints of Mao Zedong or Marilyn Monroe, or indeed this traced-on photo of Michael Jackson, seemed to me a way to try and distill that essence of who these people are, which made it even more interesting to try and locate the same meaning in the other pictures.
I don't know if these thoughts are ground-breaking (probably not) or so basic as to elicit snorts of derision (probably more likely), but if accurate, gives me a new way to appreciate his work and that of others in the Pop Art movement. It also gives me an insight into what he was interested in, which helps explain why he made the art that he made. Every artist has their preoccupations and pet themes, which show up again and again in their work, and for me, being able to identify these themes makes me like the work more.
It's on my mind quite a bit also because I recently spent a few idle minutes reading up on some of Neil Gaiman's work on Wikipedia, which listed certain themes he's played with since his early comics work. It also made me think of what the themes are that I'm most interested in for my own stories - future generations of literary critics will have to parse this out themselves, I suppose, but based on some of the stories I've been writing lately consciousness and artificial intelligence are fairly big, at least in some of my stuff.
On the other hand, a writer (or any other artist) probably shouldn't spend too much time teasing the themes out of his own work, right? Maybe it's all Freudian and I'm trying to express something related to shagging. Who knows?
That notwithstanding, if you're in the Bay Area, you should have a look at the exhibition. The page warns, somewhat euphemistically, that some images "may not be appropriate for young viewers", so I'll spell it out: there are some female and male nudes, which are generally quite tasteful and artistic, and then there are some photos of gay sex, including ejaculation. The more explicit contacts remain fairly small, but it's pretty clear what's going on, so if that sort of thing bothers you, feel free to skim that corner of the gallery and focus on the others.
And please do check it out! As I say, there are a lot of interesting themes covered, and if nothing else the pictures of celebrities, storefronts and Warhol's acquaintances in the drag community are fascinating artifacts of 1970s and 1980s New York, subject matter that I've always liked.
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