So many of Andy Warhols iconic works are based on taking an image soup can to electric chair and creating seemingly endless variations within that theme. It was fitting then that as the Fleming Museum celebrated the opening of "Andy Warhol: Work and Play" last week, there were multiple Andys (students dressed in black, sporting silver wigs) in the crowd. Joined by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, they brought a Warhol-certified sense of irreverence to the staid Marble Court and the biggest art show in the Fleming galleries since the 1995 Picasso exhibit.
Last weeks response to a triple play of a presidential preview party/benefit, an academic community preview, and the bona fide public opening promises that for patron appeal the Warhol show will rival the Picasso prints of 1995, which drew 18,000 to the museum over three months.
A call well taken
Serendipity made "Work and Play" a possibility, says Fleming Director Janie Cohen, but as she describes the evolution of the show, its clear that a great deal of hard work and thoughtful planning by the Fleming staff has gone into turning that possibility into reality. Cohen traces the roots of "Work and Play" to an afternoon several years ago when she was forwarded a call from photographer and poet Gerard Malanga, Warhols studio assistant during his fertile "Factory" years of the 1960s. Attempting to locate an old friend on campus, Malanga had been passed to Cohen, who recognized the name and gladly took the call. As she recounts the out-of-the-blue call, it isnt clear whether Malanga ever found his UVM friend, but he did find an intrigued curator and a place for his photography.
"Work and Play" began to truly take shape when Cohen learned that Class of 1978 alumnus Jon Kilik, a prominent film producer, had begun to collect art after his work on a film about Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist Warhol collaborated with in the 1980s. A guest of honor at last weeks opening events, Kilik says that part of his initial attraction to Warhols work stemmed from its relevance to his own life as a child of the sixties and seventies, and grew as he became immersed in the world of painters while researching and filming "Basquiat." Kiliks Warhol collection numbered eleven works when he first offered it to Cohen for a Fleming show, but quickly doubled into a diverse assemblage that forms the heart of the exhibit.
Perhaps the quirkiest bit of luck fueling the show came about when Cohen happened upon several rare Warhol works in the exotic locale of downtown Burlington. Browsing North Country Books, a used bookstore on Church Street, Cohen says she did a "triple take" when she glanced in a glass case and saw what looked to be very early Warhol drawings and prints. The pieces, created by Warhol during his student years at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, had been kept for years by a Winooski resident who had been Warhols college classmate. Before moving away from Vermont, the man had passed along the Warhol works to the owner of North Country, who didnt quite know what he had until the Fleming directors catch. Cohen smiles and notes that the very early Warhols which include a rare example of his "blotted line technique," the first unique style that he would develop as a commercial artist werent on display for long after her visit.
Warhol in context
Building from the cornerstones of North Countrys rare early glimpse, Malangas photographic documentation of the artist and his milieu, and Kiliks broad collection, Cohen strove to create a retrospective exhibit that would show not only Warhols work, but the creative environment and cultural context that spawned it.
Thats essential for a museum such as the Fleming, Cohen stresses. "The fact that were in northern Vermont where many of these pieces have never been displayed and being at a university are two facts that have always informed my curating," Cohen says. "We want people to go away from this show with a deeper sense of what Warhol was about and a context to look at his work in the future and understand it better."
Though many of the pieces youd expect in a Warhol show are there "soup, Marilyn, Jackie," Cohen catalogs she strived to show some surprises such as the early work and the religious dimension of later work. Also essential to the exhibit is an exploration of recurring Warhol themes such as death and celebrity, "some of the things that just had him by the neck," Cohen says.
By definition, a strong Warhol retrospective will also be a walk, at times on the wild side, through American history and society epochal or ephemeral, Birmingham race riots or drag queens. "He was such an American artist and really had his finger on the pulse of popular culture," Cohen says. "Warhol understood this country so well and helped us all to understand it better at a very crucial time in our history."
A Whirl of Warhol
The Fleming Museum has arranged a number of events around "Work and Play," including a poetry reading and talk by Gerard Malanga on Feb. 9, art workshops for adults and children, a series of Wednesday lunchtime lectures, and potential appearances by Warhol-influenced musicians Lou Reed and John Cale of the legendary Velvet Underground.
For details see www.warholatthefleming.org or call 656-0750.
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