#andy warhol portrait

[bitter69uk]

“Satisfaction. It comes from knowing he’s a rock legend. And rich. He said he didn’t want to be singing his hit “Satisfaction” in the seventies, but he’s still singing it. To the tune of riches. Now he says, “I am driven. It’s no longer for the money. I always knew I’d be rich. I always thought I was special.” In the sixties, the Rolling Stones had over $350 million dollars in revenue. In the eighties, Mick Jagger is a rock tycoon, often investing in risky business offshore oil drilling, buying art, and having fashion-y type decorators create new rich homes for himself and Jerry Hall. Mick Jagger is the true capitalist image of success. His earnings from record sales alone will keep his chateau in France, his townhouse in New York and his three love-child daughters swimming in luxury.”

André Leon Talley reflecting on Mick Jagger in the 1984 book Mega-Star. (Boy, can you tell Talley wrote this in the “greed-is-good” 1980s?). Born on this day 80 years ago (26 July 1943): flamboyant jet-setting Rolling Stones frontman Sir Michael Philip Jagger! Pictured: Andy Warhol portrait of Jagger, 1980.

[spyboy2000]

ᴀɴᴅʏ ᴡᴀʀʜᴏʟ Promo artwork for 𝙌𝙪𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙚, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1982 film adaptation of Jean Genet's 𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 (1946).

[disease]

“GRACE JONES EATING CAKE” ANDY WARHOL | NYC, 1986 [gelatin silver print | 10 × 8"]

[thunderstruck9]

Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987), Marcel Proust, 1974. Acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 101 x 101 cm.

[creativespark]

Keith Haring and Juan Dubose photographed by Andy Warhol at the Factory on August 18, 1983

[snowangelsoul]

Andy Warhol was Here

Photo by @snowangelsoul

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Emma Riva

Andy Warhol painted Mao, machine guns and Marilyn Monroe, but the public was scandalized in 1980 when he painted Jews.

The New York Times claimed that Warhol’s “Ten Portraits of Jews in the Twentieth Century” “reek[ed] of commercialism, and their contribution to art is nil,” and The Philadelphia Inquirer called the portraits “Jewploitation.”

But this month, Andy Warhol Museum Chief Curator Aaron Levi Garvey, a Jewish curator and historian originally from New York, installed them at the museum.

“I never understood calling these portraits commercial or vapid,” Garvey said. “What of Warhol’s work isn’t commercial? He worked with the idea of what an icon is.”

The 10 Jewish subjects that Warhol, art dealer Ronald Feldman and JCC of Greater Washington Gallery Director Susan Morgenstein selected in 1980 were actress Sarah Bernhardt; United States Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis; philosopher Martin Buber; physicist Albert Einstein; psychologist Sigmund Freud; comedians the Marx Brothers; Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir; songwriter George Gershwin; and writers Franz Kafka and Gertrude Stein.

The installation at the Warhol, Garvey said, was initially conceived as a gesture of solidarity coinciding with the five-year commemoration of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

Then the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 happened.

Fear of controversy over highlighting Jews during a period of escalating violence and brutality in Israel — as well as personal antisemitic threats that Garvey said were made against him via email and voicemail — could have caused the Jewish curator to postpone or cancel the exhibit. But he’s no stranger to anti-Jewish hate and decided to go through with the installation.

“People used to carve swastikas into my desk when I was in high school, and I experienced major antisemitism in college,” he said. “I want viewers of ‘Ten Portraits’ to learn and be open to dialogue.”

The portraits share a room on the fourth floor of the Warhol with Keith Haring’s “Untitled (Elephant)” — a literal elephant in the room alongside a figurative one, Garvey noted.

In the lineup of Warhol’s “Jewish geniuses,” as the artist nicknamed them, the views and figures represented are complex. Kafka abandoned Judaism. Bernhardt hid her Jewish identity. Stein supported the Vichy government of France, an actively anti-Jewish regime. Einstein is quoted as saying: “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state” in a 1938 speech entitled “Our Debt to Zionism,” even though he was offered the position of president of Israel.

One of the many things that makes “Ten Portraits” so timely and provocative is that it asks viewers to consider what being a Jewish icon means. All the portraits are of Ashkenazi Jews and speak to a certain image of Jewish identity. However, rather than Jacob Riis-esque tenement photography or depictions of Jewish suffering and tragedy, Warhol highlighted Jewish exceptionalism in the arts, government and sciences.

“I want viewers to think about all of these people in multitudes, in a non-linear fashion,” Garvey said. “It’s about Jewish exceptionalism but in a multitude of ways. All of the subjects contain multitudes. In the wall text, I put that Martin Buber was a Zionist philosopher. Someone told me I couldn’t say that, and I was like, ‘Well, that’s what he was,’” Garvey recalled.

Garvey said that the museum’s internal response to the installation has been mixed, including various complaints that misidentified Garvey’s ethnicity and some inflammatory antisemitic remarks. But nonetheless, Garvey and Warhol Director Patrick Moore co-signed an exhibition statement calling for peace and solidarity.

[fayegonnaslay]

Warhol & Liza

Liza Minnelli, 1978.

Liza Minnelli, 1977.

Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli, 1979.

[elixir]

Skulls Andy Warhol — 1976 four screenprints in color

[the-cricket-chirps]

Jamie Wyeth

Lunch At The Factory

2008

[agelessphotography]

Grace Jones, Andy Warhol, 1984

[sydneytheeandean]

[disease]

"ANDY WARHOL @ CFDA AWARDS DINNER, HONORING JAMES GALANOS @ THE NYPL" RON GALELLA | NYC, JANUARY 1985 [gelatin silver print | 30 x 40"]

[thunderstruck9]

Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987), Debbie Harry, 1980. Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, 42 x 42 in.

[creativespark]

Bob Adelman (American, 1931-2016), Andy Warhol on the fire escape at the Factory at 231 East 47th Street in New York City, 1965

[timmurleyart]

The comeback kid. The 45th AND 47th president of the USA. 🟥⬜️🟦🇺🇸