At MA*GA in Gallarate a major exhibition on Andy Warhol with 200 works

MA*GA in Gallarate will experience more than a quarter-hour of celebrity. In fact, for more than four months, from January 22 to June 18, 2023, MA*GA will host an anthological exhibition dedicated to Andy Warhol (Pittsburgh, 1928 - New York, 1987), one of the absolute pinnacles of twentieth-century art and culture. The exhibition, curated by Maurizio Vanni and Emma Zanella, recounts the multifaceted and rich production of the father of American Pop Art who, during his long career, was a painter, illustrator, screenwriter, film and television producer, director, cinematographer and himself an actor, a figure who radically changed the way contemporary society was seen and perceived.

The exhibition, entitled Andy Warhol. Serial Identity, to emphasize how much his research is characterized by absolute versatility and the desire for transformation, traces through more than 200 works (also from international institutions such as The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and Ronald Nameth’s archive) Warhol’s entire creative universe, from his early drawings made forpublishing and fashion, to the most important pop works where the main protagonists are celebrities, such as musicians, registers, designers, politicians, actors, to the commercial brands of big companies, which have become icons of a new way of living and consuming, banal elements of everyday life elevated to contemporary icons.

The exhibition opens with a comparison between some private drawings and the first highly refined advertising sketches of the 1950s; it was precisely the advertising codes, which had become the engine of social living and recognizability in the years when American industrial production was going full throttle, that led the artist to a complete reversal of aesthetic, linguistic and personal outcomes.

From the very early 1960s Warhol began experimenting with the languages, techniques, and broad codes of mass communication, dragging them into his universe and reinventing them with an extremely recognizable stylistic signature, in every field of expression and creative research, in the serial production of silkscreen works, in the making of experimental films, in publishing, in photography, and in the unscrupulous use of mass media.

On display will be Andy Warhol’s famous cycles such as Flowers, Campbell’s Soup, Death & Disasters, portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, Mao Tsê-tung, and the famous Ladies and Gentlemen series, as well as a body of works and materials related to no less important Warhol productions such as those related to publishing and record cover graphics. In fact, the artist produced, in addition to the best-known artist’s books, biographical books written in the first person and designed entirely the catalogs of some of his personal exhibitions; his passion for print media also led him to found the famous and long-running Interview magazine.

The exhibition will interweave different narrative levels and lead the viewer to grasp the less obvious aspects of his work: The search for ever-changing identities that the artist wanted to give of himself; the eagerness to experiment with artistic languages that continually flow into one another; and the deep connection of his work with the worlds of music, publishing, and film, themes that will be greatly reflected in the exhibition also thanks to the collaboration with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh for Silent Movie and Screen Tests and extraordinary excerpts ofAndy Warhol TV programming.

The exhibition project is made special and unique by the extensive section devoted to Warhol’s experimentation with and investigation of the process of filming and being filmed; on display in its entirety are Empire (1964) (8 hours and 5 minutes), the famous shot of theEmpire State Building from sunset to sunrise; Kiss (1963-1964) (58 minutes), sequencing of kisses exchanged by straight and same-sex couples; and four Screen Tests - Salvador Dali, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed (Coke) and Edie Sedgwick - still camera shots made by pointing the camera at people who visited the Factory.

Also arriving on loan from the Pittsburgh Museum will be the five episodes of Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes, produced for the iconic Andy Warhol TV that aired from 1985 to 1987, and the three 1981 video clips for Saturday Night Live, America’s most popular TV show, considered the pinnacles of Warholian television work.

This section will be further amplified at Porta di Milano - Milan Malpensa Airport, thanks to SEA, with a large video wall dedicated to Andy Warhol TV and a spectacular installation inspired by Warhol’s best-known images.

Also on display for the first time in Italy is the extraordinary video installation by American photographer and filmmaker Ronald Nameth born of the performance Exploding Plastic Inevitable orchestrated by Warhol with the Velvet Underground and Nico. From April 1966 to May of the following year, Exploding Plastic Inevitable was staged, with alternating success with audiences and critics, in several American cities: from New York to Los Angeles, from San Francisco to Chicago to Provincetown. The show, a true ante litteram media mix performance, featured Warhol manipulating lights and images in the environment to experiment with and recreate an immersive psychedelic realm and the visual experiences of lysergic acid, while the Velvet Underground and Nico performed live dressed completely in white, serving as a moving medium for film and slide projections with various images and colors.

The film, dedicated to the show and shot in June 1966 by Ronald Nameth on the occasion of the show’s presentation at Poor Richard ’s in Chicago, takes the form of a multi-channel environmental and immersive projection and is the only complete source of documentation of the performance, loaned exclusively to MA*GA by Ronald Nameth’s archive with the collaboration of MACBA in Barcelona.

Warhol’s personal and heartfelt relationship with music will also emerge from the record covers that the artist made since the 1950s and throughout his life, from covers dedicated to classical music and Jazz of the 1940s and 1950s to the far more famous record covers of the Velvet Underground and Nico, Rolling Stones, John Cale, Liza Minnelli, Aretha Franklin, The Smiths, Debbie Harry, and Loredana Bertè, to name just a few well-known collaborations.

The exhibition design at MA*GA and Milan Malpensa Airport is by set designer Margherita Palli, who counts collaborations with Milan’s Teatro alla Scala and the Venice Art Biennale.

The public will have the opportunity to explore the still topical themes of Warhol’s research accompanied by specific educational activities designed for the occasion by MA*GA’s educational department including guided tours, contemporary art workshops, lectures and family events.

All works in the exhibition and historical-critical essays by Maurizio Vanni, Emma Zanella, Luciano Bolzoni, Federica Crespi, Michela Guasco, Michele Lombardelli, Luca Palermo, and Marco Senaldi are published in the bilingual Italian-English catalog, Nomos Edizioni.

The exhibition is produced by MA*GA Museum and Spirale d’Idee (MI), in collaboration with the City of Gallarate, sponsored by Regione Lombardia and supported by Ricola, SEA and Missoni as main partners.

For all information, you can visit the official MA*GA website.

Pictured: Andy Warhol, Kiss, 1963-64. Photo: The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute.

At MA*GA in Gallarate a major exhibition on Andy Warhol with 200 works

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