Le grand monde d'Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola, born in August 6th, 1928, died in February 1987, more commonly know as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, filmmaker and music producer. He was a central figure in Pop Art. He is especially famous for his serigraphy art work; this practise is from the advertising technique. His work treats us to many different subjects but the most famous subject is certainly his society consumer objects, like the famed "Campbell's soup".

The exhibition "le grand monde d'Andy Warhol", is the first great exhibition about Warhol produce in France. This exhibition proposes a different view on Warhol's work than the American view. So, this exhibition chose to show an aspect of his less known work, his portraits serigraphy, rather than his Marilyn's and Jackie's portraits which are famous in whole world, his portrait of order (portraits de commandes) are so much less known. As well as this we can see a part of Warhol's work that has a religious dimension.

To begin with, his portrait of order represents more of his entourage, artists like Joseph Beuys, Hollywood celebrities like Liz Taylor, musicians such as Mike Jagger, couturiers like Yves Saint Laurent, politicians and art merchants. All his portraits are made with the serigraphy technique which is a practise borrowed from advertising, Warhol revolutionizes portraits of order codes which have been practised for many centuries. All his portraits represent just the face of the person who wants a portrait. He took a Polaroid before making the serigraphy and painted directly from the Polaroid. This part of Warhol's art could be compared to portrait of order in Art History; it is a classic vision of art with a modern technique. All his portraits are the same size, so that if we put all portraits together we would get one giant portrait of 80's society.

Additionally, this exhibition shows a religious dimension in Warhol's art work, with the first and the last picture. The first picture is an auto portrait from 1948, we find the dimension in the title, "the Lord gave me my face but I can scratch my own nose." This Warhol auto portrait represents face artist so caricatured, when Warhol painted this picture he posed himself many question about religion and the meaning of the life.

Finally, the last picture represents the Last Supper, Warhol reproduced a detail of the picture the Jesus portrait, a hundred times over so that a whole wall was covered by the Jesus portrait. We can notice from this that twentieth century artists have not had the same connection with religion, unlike the ancient artists used to. It is interesting to see that Warhol has some connection to religion.

Even though Andy Warhol's connection with religion is not well known, we do know that Warhol was obsessed with death and this is surely be cause he was the victim of attempted murderer. Could this be the reason Andy Warhol turned to religion? In conclusion, this great exhibition about Andy Warhol chose to show different aspects of his work, the works that were presented are not very well known but they represented a great part of Andy Warhol's work.

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