Warhol Lives! by Lovelle Harris The room is filled with some of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century - Dylan, Sting, Madonna. The crowd, a huddled mass of onlookers, is inches from the world’s most legendary musicians. This isn’t a rock concert, but rather one of the rooms exploring the work of Andy Warhol through his relationship with music at the Warhol Live exhibit, currently showing through May 17 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. “This is the second venue of the exhibition organized by curator Stephane Aquin of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art,” says Timothy Anglin Burgard, the curator in charge of American art at the de Young who supervised the installation. As those in attendance maneuver through a labyrinth of galleries displaying Warhol’s art, music is ever present. Judy Garland’s silky voice welcomes the onlookers in the first gallery, simply titled, Hollywood, with the classic “Under the Rainbow.” Thematic, massive silkscreened prints of Elvis Presley and Garland with Liza Minnelli line the corridor walls. “Hollywood is his first engagement in a serious, comprehensive way with music as a theme,” Burgard says. “Which is of course the theme of the exhibition.” Connected by passageways sheathed in black velvet curtains, the audience is led from each gallery through a progression of his early work in album cover design for artists like Count Basie and John Lennon, to his experimentation with
filmmaking and photography. “So the layout is essentially chronological,” Burgard says. “You go from Hollywood, when he was young Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh watching Judy Garland and Shirley Temple and so forth.” Bringing the exhibit to the de Young was not only a strategic move to bolster support for its continuing effort to grow its permanent collection, but it also allowed the museum an opportunity re-imagine the original show. “The original institution is often under extraordinary pressure in terms of time.” Burgard says. “You also have an opportunity as the second or third venue, in this case the second venue, to critique the original installation.” The third gallery, containing many of Warhol’s films, such as the iconic “Sleep” and “Empire” from 1963 and 1964 respectively, are truly larger than life. “The films, which we project quite large, at least 8 feet across, if not 10. I know in Montreal the curator had them much smaller,” Burgard says. “We had a discussion about it and my feeling was since they were [originally] projected in theaters it would give them more presence.” The excesses of the Silver Factory are on full display moving into the fourth gallery. Nico’s smoky voice wafts hauntingly through the room as The Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale” plays in the background. Black and white photographs by Stephen Shore document Edie Sedgwick and other Factory
regulars candidly. In a silverencased alcove at the end of the room, a film depicting Factory regulars dancing, singing and cavorting about is projected on the wall. “I liked how it was set up,” says 20-year-old Sarah DelaneyBuschof, a leggy brunette from Santa Cruz who took in the exhibit with friends and family. “It was so interactive.” Mick Jagger gyrates on the stage; two stripped-down television sets show his body writhing in a contorted mass of arms, legs, lips and hips as he belts out the lyrics to “Satisfaction.” Dedicated entirely to Warhol’s fascination and friendship with Jagger, the gallery called “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mick Jagger,” also contains several large renderings of the singer in vivid color combinations. “Rapture” by Blondie gushes from the speakers in the last gallery, “Night Clubbing”. The room oozes of 80s decadence - silkscreened images of pop icons, such as Michael Jackson, Truman Capote and Joan Collins are littered throughout the last, cavernous gallery. As the exhibition winds down, Burgard indicates that the showing was indeed a success, both as a mechanism for educating as well as entertaining the public. “Every time I went through the curtains it was like a different world,” Delaney-Buschof says. “It was like you were actually there.”