Andy Warhol: A Different Kind of Love

A brand new free Andy Warhol exhibit is currently on display until the end of March sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
I wasn’t expecting much but was blown away that this exhibit was really well put together.
It’s a pop up exhibit held at the Maison Al (1280 Homer Street). The set up is spacious and well lit. Depending on your commitment to Warhol as an artist, there’s lots to see and read.
Love or hate his style, he’s recently had a re-​birth in interest thanks to street artists, Gaga’s endorsement, the new hipster movement and alternative art in general. With that said it was no surprise when I went that the place was flooded with hipsters, the kind that you would see roaming your local campus. I did see some middle aged pop culture fans but not in large numbers as during the exhibit a few years ago at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

In case you’re wondering… a B stage print of a can of Campbell’s Beef Broth soup is around $ 45,000. An original second run on canvass = 4 million according to the exhibit host. The price is equal to 36,000 cans of soup on sale.
Expect to see mostly second run and variations, however, well presented and cool to see framed in one room.
There’s some slight personal controversy in terms of the authenticity of his prints that I’ve known for years. This has prevented me from paying to see a Warhol exhibit (I went to the Vancouver Art Gallery one 8 years ago on their free day). Like Banski, many of Warhol’s most famous paintings were made by assistants, often when Warhol wasn’t even in the studio. Some of the historical time lines between print productions (by his own hand) and when he was filing his Avant-​garde films with Edie Sedwick don‘t match. How can he be at two places at once? I’ve never seen this fact in publication anywhere. These were my own timeline calculations made on a Saturday night during one of my Veronica Mars moments.
Another reason why I am reluctant to pay to see a Warhol exhibit is that I cannot Google how the foundation, outside donating works of art for free view, has encouraged, sponsored or paid for the development of the visual arts (including university scholarships). I have a hard time supporting a foundation that doesn’t provide corporate transparency. It has been reported in Vanity Fair and other on-​line articles that the foundation‘s Board don‘t have a template for authenticating Warhol‘s works. The Board, historically by reputation, have openly rejected the authenticity of personally commissioned earlier works.
For a quick free view on a weekend it’s a cool thing to do in the city as long as you take it with a grain of Campbell‘s soup salt. It was hard for me to walk around and dismiss all the controversy and my slight distaste for the foundation and just enjoy as is, however, I managed in spite of my jadedness.
In true Isabelle Guns clumsy fashion I went past the white line and almost set off one of the alarms. I was informed that they have high security due to the value of the work. The host of the exhibit, who was a sweetheart, clearly had no extensive background on the foundation, authenticity standards and or the controversy surrounding these multiple silk screen prints to be making any sort of slight financial reminder to me. I get it, I almost crossed the white line, however, how many white lines has the estate’s foundation crossed Warhol enthusiasts over the past 4 decades?
Pictures are welcome, however, no flash photography. I saw some jack ass use a Selfie Stick in front the Campbell Soup print, therefore, I photo bombed them by holding my can of no name brand tomato soup.
My fascination with Warhol is less about the art itself, which has been mimicked and copied with criticism and anger over the past 10 years (most notably with Banski), and more about his association with David Bowie in the 60’s. The two names go synonymously together as part of the vocabulary of the era.