ANDY WARHOL. POP STARS

DRAWINGS AND COLLAGES

24 November 2006 - 18 February 2007
Andy Warhol
Love You Live (Mick Jagger), 1975

Collage, screen print and acetate

© The Estate and Foundation of Andy Warhol / VBK, Vienna 2009 / Privat Collection London
The Albertina Museum is showing more than 60 drawings and original collages by Andy Warhol, from the years 1975 to 1986 - more than half of which have not previously been publicly displayed. They originate from the artist’s estate, which the New York-based “Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts” has been administrating.

The graphic portraits of famous personalities, ranging from Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson, oscillate between glamour and melancholy, between a spontaneous momentum and the serial repetition so typical of pop culture, which may stylise a person one may encounter on the streets almost any day into a cultural icon. Warhol shows apparently intimate moments from his encounters with eminent musicians of his time. In most cases, photographs were used as templates for his portraits, which he would produce, with the help of an overhead projector, on sheets of paper attached to a wall, tracing certain lines with a soft grey graphite stick. These drawings were also used by the artist to serve as the basis for coloured acrylic and screen prints.