Andy Warhol’s lifelong fascination with celebrity and the art of portraiture is examined in this exhibition featuring 168 drawings, fashion sketches and paintings, photo-booth film strips, Polaroids, photographs, personal memorabilia and portrait paintings. From early fashion sketches to Warhol’s revolutionary use of media images, the power of the Warhol portrait is traced, revealing how the artist transformed this genre into the status symbol of an era.
Andy Warhol: Portraits includes examples of Warhol’s self-portraits, in addition to a broad sampling of the 20th–century luminaries who eagerly sat for him. Among the diversity featured here are the fashion scion Yves Saint Laurent, playwright Tennessee Williams, Pulitzer-prize winner Truman Capote, artists Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and actors Judy Garland, Jane Fonda, and Sylvester Stallone. Evoking the experience of Warhol’s Factory, an exhibition interactive allows visitors to make their own Screen Test, bringing to life and making personal a related aspect of Warhol’s portraiture.
Andy Warhol: Portraits was organized by The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.