ART-PRESENTATION: Richard Avedon & Andy Warhol

Richard Avedon and Andy Warhol are two major figures of postwar America, known for dipping in and out of politics and pop culture and capturing both insiders and outsiders. Though the artists worked in different mediums (Avedon in photography, Warhol primarily in screenprinting), both relied heavily on repetition and serialization in their portraiture.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Gallery Archive

It makes sense then, that a new exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in London brings their photographs and prints into conversation for the first time. Each gallery in Gagosian’s Britannia Street space juxtaposes bright and B&W works that touch on their shared themes of social and political power, sexuality, doomed celebrity and mortality. The America in which Avedon and Warhol lived and worked was fast evolving, both politically and socially. Prosperity and materialism met slackening of rigid morals, to make a fast-paced hard-living society. Avedon’s distinctive gelatin-silver prints and Warhol’s boldly colored silkscreens variously depict many of the same recognizable faces, including Bianca Jagger, Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Rudolf Nureyev. The works in the exhibition, which date from the ‘50s through the ‘90s, emphasize such common themes as social and political power, the evolving acceptance of cultural differences, the inevitability of mortality and the glamour and despair of celebrity. Each gallery juxtaposes works that underscore these themes, beginning with “The Family”, Avedon’s ambitious conceptual portrayal of 69 individuals at the epicenter of American politics at that time, together with Warhol’s monumental portrait of the Mao Tse-tung, “Mao”. Such deadpan was a mark of Pop Art ambivalence, more commonly associated with Warhol, but equally applicable in this instance to Avedon. Avedon’s enormous portrait “Andy Warhol and members of The Factory” from 1969, which dominates an entire wall, and his portrait of dancer John Martin in drag from 1975, sit alongside a piece from Warhol’s silkscreen drag series “Ladies and Gentleman”. The third gallery contains an extended meditation on the darker side of human existence, as well as its potential salvation: Warhol’s “Skull and Guns” paintings are juxtaposed with photographs from Avedon’s “Brandenburg Gate” portfolio, taken during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Avedon and Warhol harnessed the power of images to reflect the revolutionary social attitudes of their time.

Info: Gagosian Gallery, 6-24 Britannia Street, London, Duration: 9/2-23/4/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.gagosian.com