From the Polaroid and Back Again
Andy Warhol: From the Polaroid and Back Again
On the occasion of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Andy Warhol retrospective, Jessica Beck, the Milton Fine Curator of Art at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, considers the artist’s career-spanning use of Polaroid photography as part of his more expansive practice.
This essay was featured in the winter 2018 issue of Gagosian Quarterly.
Essay Excerpt:
“The scholarship and exhibition history of Andy Warhol’s work have broken up his practice into different acts: the celebrated 1960s; the portrait commissions of the 1970s, after he was shot; and the final decade, which in terms of art criticism remains one of the most unresolved. Scholars too tend to segment Warhol’s practice by medium, rather than showing the interconnectedness that Warhol created between photography and painting. While the artist’s shooting, by Valerie Solanas in 1968, contributed to a rupture in his intense productivity throughout most of the 1960s, a consistent grammar persisted at the core of his work, a pattern circulating around ideas of instantaneity, a progress toward the new, and an embrace of the moment. Warhol’s practice is fundamentally tied to the use of new technology, the sociopolitical climate, and the popular culture of his time. One might wonder, then, why interest in his work prevails over decades of shifting styles and trends. He made art from his surroundings and created a social practice that involved recording and documenting interactions at parties and in his studio. He let us in on his working methods and set a precedent for our contemporary fixation on recording, posting, and sharing details of our lives with strangers online. Warhol’s principal tools for evading the grip of history were his camera and his use of photography. As a tool for recording, the camera became a means of staving off death and forgetfulness and left a treasure trove of memories and moments that continue to tell stories of his past and to unlock insight into his art.”