This book explores a new interpretation of Andy Warhol's The Last Supper Series. It brings together two worlds, the sacred and the secular. By showing how the sacred is manifest in advertising, it demonstrates the metaphorical power of popular imagery. Warhol bore out the proposition that an artist is essentially a "Yours faithfully". The essence of his Last Supper series lies in the mystery that should remain so: 'mirari non rimari sapientia vera est'. To scrutinize the host would be unfaithful to Christ, who said: "This is my Body". To perceive Warhol's work as simply signifying itself would be unfaithful to America's most influential artist. A case in point is The Last Supper (Dove): pictorial analysis proves that Leonardo's Il Cenacolo was not robbed of its sublimity. Warhol remained faithful to it as a means of unveiling the holy.
This book explores a fascinating interpretation of Warhol's "The Last Supper Series." By showing how the sacred is manifest in modern advertising, it demonstrates that America's most influential artist, Andy Warhol (1928-1987), did not rob Leonardo's "Il Cenacolo" of its sublimity.
The definitive biography of a fascinating and paradoxical figure, one of the most influential artists of his—or any—age To this day, mention the name “Andy Warhol” to almost anyone and you’ll hear about his famous images of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. But though Pop Art became synonymous with Warhol’s name and dominated the public’s image of him, his life and work are infinitely more complex and multi-faceted than that. In Warhol, esteemed art critic Blake Gopnik takes on Andy Warhol in all his depth and dimensions. “The meanings of his art depend on the way he lived and who he was,” as Gopnik writes. “That’s why the details of his biography matter more than for almost any cultural figure,” from his working-class Pittsburgh upbringing as the child of immigrants to his early career in commercial art to his total immersion in the “performance” of being an artist, accompanied by global fame and stardom—and his attempted assassination. The extent and range of Warhol’s success, and his deliberate attempts to thwart his biographers, means that it hasn’t been easy to put together an accurate or complete image of him. But in this biography, unprecedented in its scope and detail as well as in its access to Warhol’s archives, Gopnik brings to life a figure who continues to fascinate because of his contradictions—he was known as sweet and caring to his loved ones but also a coldhearted manipulator; a deep-thinking avant-gardist but also a true lover of schlock and kitsch; a faithful churchgoer but also an eager sinner, skeptic, and cynic. Wide-ranging and immersive, Warhol gives us the most robust and intricate picture to date of a man and an artist who consistently defied easy categorization and whose life and work continue to profoundly affect our culture and society today.
Two images of Andy Warhol exist in the popular press: the Pope of Pop of the Sixties, and the partying, fright-wigged Andy of the Seventies. In the two years before he died, however, Warhol made over 100 paintings, drawings, and prints based on Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. The dramatic story of these works is told in this book for the first time. Revealed here is the part of Andy Warhol that he kept very secret: his lifelong church attendance and his personal piety. Art historian and curator Jane Daggett Dillenberger explores the sources and manifestations of Warhol's spiritual side, the manifestations of which are to be found in the celebrated paintings of the last decade of Warhol's life: his Skull paintings, the prints based on Renaissance religious artwork, the Cross paintings, and the large series based on The Last Supper.>
"Andy Warhol: Revelation, opening October 20, 2019, will be accompanied by this 96 page full-color exhibition catalogue. This publication includes a forward from Patrick Moore, the director of The Andy Warhol Museum, an essay by José Carlos Diaz, chief curator at The Warhol, titled "Into the Sunset" on the spiritual aspects of Warhol's "Sunset" commission in 1967, and an essay by Miranda Lash, curator of contemporary art at the Speed Art Museum, titled "Kitsch You Can Believe In: Warhol's Incessant Last Supper." The book will also feature descriptions of the thematic exhibition sections, along with high quality image plates of selected works and a comprehensive checklist of all the objects featured in the show. The Revelation catalogue will provide a snapshot of the exhibition, which will be the first of its kind to comprehensively examine the Pop artist's complex Catholic faith in relation to his artistic production. In what follows, you will find a summary of the scope and scale of the exhibition's content: Christian motifs frequently appear in both explicit and metaphorical forms throughout the body of Warhol's oeuvre. While his monumental crosses and depictions of Christ directly reference biblical stories, the exhibition will also explore his coded depictions of spirituality such as an unfinished film reel depicting the setting sun, originally commissioned by the de Menil family and funded by the Roman Catholic Church. Born in Pittsburgh to a devout Byzantine Catholic family, Warhol grew up attending multiple weekly services at his local church with his mother, Julia Warhola. He would stare for hours at the icon paintings of Christ and the saints that hung in the elaborate iconostasis, or icon screen, at the front of the nave. In the Warhola family's Carpatho-Rusyn neighborhood, life revolved around the church community, and the young artist was deeply affected by this environment. Using The Warhol's robust holdings of the artist's early works, the exhibition will trace the influence of his religious roots in Pittsburgh to his Pop career in New York City. Throughout his life as a celebrity artist, Warhol retained some of his Catholic practices when his peers were distancing themselves from their religious backgrounds. Yet, his relationship with Catholicism was far from simple. As a queer man, Warhol may have felt a sense of guilt and fear towards the Catholic Church, which kept him from fully immersing himself in the faith. Nevertheless, he used various media to explore this tension through his art. From iconic portraits of celebrities to appropriated Renaissance masterpieces, Warhol flirted with styles and symbolism from Eastern and Western Catholic art history, carefully reframing them within the context of Pop. Through this process, the artist elevated kitsch and mundane images from mass media, and transformed them into sacred high art. The exhibition will feature over 100 objects from the museum's permanent collection, including archival materials, drawings, paintings, prints and film. Rare source material and newly discovered items will provide an intimate look on Warhol's creative process. Through both obscure works such as the "sunset" film commission from 1967 and late masterpieces like the pink Last Supper (1986), the exhibition will present a fresh perspective on the artist. Andy Warhol: Revelation is curated by José Carlos Diaz, chief curator at The Andy Warhol Museum. After opening at The Warhol, Andy Warhol: Revelation will travel to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky and be on view from April 3 through August 21, 2020"--
The legendary frontman of Judas Priest, one of the most successful heavy metal bands of all time, celebrates five decades of heavy metal in this tell-all memoir. Most priests hear confessions. This one is making his. Rob Halford, front man of global iconic metal band Judas Priest, is a true "Metal God." Raised in Britain's hard-working, heavy industrial heartland, he and his music were forged in the Black Country. Confess, his full autobiography, is an unforgettable rock 'n' roll story-a journey from a Walsall council estate to musical fame via alcoholism, addiction, police cells, ill-fated sexual trysts, and bleak personal tragedy, through to rehab, coming out, redemption . . . and finding love. Now, he is telling his gospel truth. Told with Halford's trademark self-deprecating, deadpan Black Country humor, Confess is the story of an extraordinary five decades in the music industry. It is also the tale of unlikely encounters with everybody from Superman to Andy Warhol, Madonna, Jack Nicholson, and the Queen. More than anything else, it's a celebration of the fire and power of heavy metal. Rob Halford has decided to Confess. Because it's good for the soul. Named one of the Best Music Books of 2020 by Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews
A unique 360‐degree view of an incomparable 20th-century American artist One of the most emulated and significant figures in modern art, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) rose to fame in the 1960s with his iconic Pop pieces. Warhol expanded the boundaries by which art is defined and created groundbreaking work in a diverse array of media that includes paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, films, and installations. This ambitious book is the first to examine Warhol's work in its entirety. It builds on a wealth of new research and materials that have come to light in recent decades and offers a rare and much-needed comprehensive look at the full scope of Warhol's production--from his commercial illustrations of the 1950s through his monumental paintings of the 1980s. Donna De Salvo explores how Warhol's work engages with notions of public and private, the redefinition of media, and the role of abstraction, while a series of incisive and eye-opening essays by eminent scholars and contemporary artists touch on a broad range of topics, such as Warhol's response to the AIDS epidemic, his international influence, and how his work relates to constructs of self-image seen in social media today.
To his critics, he was the cynical magus of a movement that debased high art and reduced it to a commodity. To his admirers, he was the most important artist since Picasso. As the quintessential Pop artist, Andy Warhol razed the barrier between high and low culture. Pop disentangles the myths of Warhol from the man he truly was, offering a vivid, entertaining, and provocative look at the legendary artist’s personal and artistic evolution during his most productive and innovative years. It is a dynamic, groundbreaking portrait of the man who changed the way we see the world.
Art has always been important for religion or spirituality. Secular art displayed in museums can also be spiritual, and it is this art that is the subject of this book. Many of the works of art produced by Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, and Anselm Kiefer are spiritual in nature. These works reveal their own spirituality, which often has no connection to official religions. Wessel Stoker demonstrates that these artists communicate religious insights through images and shows how they depict the relationship between heaven and earth, between this world and a transcendent reality, thus clearly drawing the contours of the spirituality these works evince.
The Question-and-Answer interview was one of Andy Warhol's favorite communication vehicles, so much so that he named his own magazine after the form. Yet, never before has anyone published a collection of interviews that Warhol himself gave. I'll Be Your Mirror contains more then thirty conversations revealing this unique and important artist. Each piece presents a different facet of the Sphinx-like Warhol's ever-evolving personality. Writer Kenneth Goldsmith provides context and provenance for each selection. Beginning in 1962 with a notorious interview in which Warhol literally begs the interviewer to put words into his mouth, the book covers Warhol's most important artistic period during the '60s. As Warhol shifts to filmmaking in the '70s, this collection explores his emergence as socialite, scene-maker, and trendsetter; his influential Interview magazine; and the Studio 54 scene. In the 80s, his support of young artists like Jean-Michel Basquait, his perspective on art history and the growing relationship to technology in his work are shown. Finally, his return to religious imagery and spirituality are available in an interview conducted just months before his death. Including photographs and previous unpublished interviews, this collage of Warhol showcases the artist's ability to manipulate, captivate, and enrich American culture.
