Andy
Warhol: Self-Portraits
February 12 May
2; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Right
at the front door of Edinburghs Gallery of Modern Art, you can
smell the fresh paint. The whole ground floor is whiter than white,
in keen anticipation of the major Andy Warhol show which opens on
Saturday. Scattered around the corridor are huge wooden packing crates
labelled Empty; their contents are already in the well-guarded
galleries, propped carefully in position on scraps of carpet underlay.
In the midst of painting and carpeting my new house, Im quite
at home with these sights and smells, but I'm not so used to what
I see next.
A team of white-gloved men holds up a ghostly golden double-image
of Andy Warhol, two emaciated self-portraits superimposed, four sets
of staring eyes slightly averted. The curator, Keith Hartley, stares
back intently. After a long silence he says one inch to the
right. The men edge the picture along the wall so subtly that
the difference is barely perceptible. Hartley contemplates the image
for another heavily silent moment. Yes, thats it,
he finally says, and relaxes while the hanging team busy themselves
with a drill.
Hartley, with his shock of silver-blond hair and thick-rimmed glasses,
looks just right among dozens of iconic images of Andy Warhol. The
curator has spent the last three years collaborating with his counterparts
in Germany and Switzerland to stage this major show. It is, in fact,
the worlds first show devoted to Andy Warhol self-portraits,
and Hartley can barely believe it.
Some of the big retrospectives have included self-portraits,
he explains, but theyve been lost among the other works.
It is amazing really. Everyone recognises Warhol and part of that
is because he did such iconic images of himself. These images
have been begged and borrowed from collections around the world, no
easy task when a good Warhol can ensure a steady stream of visitors
to its own institution.
The shows earliest picture might not look much like a Warhol,
but the cheekiness is there in spades. In a shaky drawing, the young
Warhol picks his nose. Already hes very wilful, striking
a pose, comments Hartley, bending down to examine the small
work, not yet hung. Its in a deliberately naïve style,
which looks forward to this rather dumb way in which he
later behaved in interviews.
Warhol was to be an interviewers nightmare, sometimes uttering
no more than yes and no throughout entire
discussions. He cultivated a shallow image, refusing to admit to hidden
depths or profundities of any sort. What you see is what you get,
he would say; its all surface.
You tend to think of self-portraiture in a rather romantic way
as a window on the soul, says Hartley, but artists have
always used self-portraits as a way of play-acting
I think Warhol
already knew that he wasnt going to do much soul-searching in
his work.
The artist soon found his vocation. Having raised images of stars
like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor to cult status, he chose
do the same for himself. His life was to become a conscious exercise
in branding, and that meant concentrating on surface, not substance.
He had an uncanny ability to go for just the right image,
says Hartley, and then use just the right colours and the right
way of simplifying it. Even when Warhol used hasty snaps churned
out of a photo-booth, he managed to make them look iconic.
Enlarged and screen-printed in his trademark garish colours, Warhols
face is on every gallery wall, along with thick glasses and straw-blond
wig. He glares, he ponders, he tilts his head; he dresses up as detective,
woman, hanged man. He emerges from black shadows and is obliterated
by them. He hides behind his hands, behind his sunglasses, behind
his own iconic image.
The more Warhol shows his face, the more he seems to shelter behind
it. But, at the same time you get the uneasy feeling that what you
see really is what you get; that there is no private Warhol underneath.
He performed his chosen role so effectively that it very possibly
became a reality. The wigs might have been artificial, but the nose
job was real.
Warhol wasnt as good-looking as he would have liked to
have been, and Hartley has fun making me guess the artists
age in various images. Im mostly about 30 years off the mark.
Hes simply taken out all the signs of ageing, chuckles
the curator, and made himself look like a mop-haired 21-year
old.
Despite all his public foppery, Warhol did have an intensely private
side. Most people would never realise, says Hartley, that
towards the end of his life he went to church every day. He was a
devout Catholic. When the end of his life did come, it was not
the way anyone expected. Having recovered from a gun-shot wound in
1968, Warhol should have gone out with a bang. Instead, he died unexpectedly
in 1987 after a routine gall-bladder operation.
In the manner of all immortal stars, Warhols death hasnt
prevented him from producing artwork. The real wow-factor of this
exhibition is going to be the wallpaper, printed to order in Pittsburg.
Warhols face, repeated hundreds of times, will line the biggest
room in the gallery.
I ask the curator if there will be any off-cuts going spare. Unfortunately,
Hartley has promised to destroy every scrap after the exhibition.
Although its done posthumously, he explains, the
screen for making it is still made by Warhol, so any off-cuts are
in fact genuine Warhols.
Pity it would have looked nice in my new living room.
Warhols
self-conscious path to pop immortality might offer clues to Michael
Jacksons deeply confused state. While Warhol chose to shape
his fame from scratch, Jackson never got the chance to separate his
public mask from his childhood self. He seeks eternal youth in Neverland,
and in the plastic surgery. He is a product of his fans imagination,
a melting shadow.
But Jackson clearly had his private pursuits, and so did Warhol.
Catrìona
Black, Sunday Herald 06.02.05