THE WARHOLS
Andy Warhol was one of the most influential pioneers of the visual art movement known as Pop Art and his art hangs in galleries all over the world.
He began his career as a commercial illustrator, and by the 1960s he had become a controversial, eccentric, celebrity artist who used a variety of media including: drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film, music, and he was one of the first to create computer-generated art.
His work often explores the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity, and advertising, and he is one of the most famous artists of all time.
Acrylic on canvas. (1962)
Warhol first exhibited his series of Campbell's soup can paintings in 1962, with the bottom of each painting resting on a shelf like a can would in a supermarket. There are 32 paintings in the series, the number of varieties of soup sold at the time by Campbell's.
CAMPBELL'S SOUP CANS
ON LOAN FROM THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART (MoMA) IN NEW YORK.
Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas. (1963)
Double Elvis consists of two large panels covered with silver paint. One of the panels bears a full and a partial silk-screened photographic image of Elvis Presley dressed as a cowboy. The other panel is blank. Warhol decided to add the blank panel several years after the first image was created. The partial silk-screened photo is suggestive of Elvis appearing out of and disappearing into the blank panel, as if he were a ghost figure.
Warhol was inspired by Elvis Presley's successful 1960 film "Flaming Star," in which the singer-actor played a half-white, half-Native American struggling between two cultures.
Several versions of Double Elvis exist in private and public art collections worldwide, although each version is slightly different. In MAM's version the silk-screened image appears somewhat intact, though crooked and cut off at the ankles, in a single panel.
Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas. (1962)
Warhol made this painting the year screen legend Marilyn Monroe committed suicide. He painted the canvas an iridescent gold and silkscreened the star’s face in the center of the composition. Like other paintings by Warhol that feature Monroe’s likeness, this work is based on a 1953 publicity still for the movie "Niagara."
By duplicating a photograph known to millions, Warhol undermined the uniqueness and authenticity characteristic of traditional portraiture. Instead he presented Monroe as an infinitely reproducible image.
Offset lithograph. (1983)
A master of taking mass-produced images and transforming them into memorable works of art, Warhol renders the Perrier in bold colors and multiple layers in his reflection on American consumerism and contemporary culture.
THE JACKSON POLLOCKS
Not only was Jackson Pollock a major artist of his generation, but he was also a revolutionary and obscure artist who helped define the abstract expressionist movement with his unique style of drip painting.
Known as reclusive and having a volatile personality, Pollock constantly gave the art community the finger by titling his work with numbers. Numbers are neutral, void of any preconceived ideas offered by conventional titles. This technique forced viewer's to look at the picture for what it was, pure painting.
Oil on linen. (1942)
Much of Pollock’s early work is characterized by a somber palette and congested pictorial space, but Stenographic Figure is bright and airy. On top of the flat, planar fields of color, Pollock painted two elementary humanoid forms, one near the right edge of the canvas and another just left of center, then made fine-lined calligraphic brushstrokes across the entire surface.
Stenographic Figure was first shown in 1943, at the Spring Salon for Young Artists held by Peggy Guggenheim at her gallery Art of This Century. It garnered praise from, among others, artist Piet Mondrian, who described it as “the most interesting work I’ve seen so far in America.”
Enamel paint on canvas. (1951)
Echo: Number 15, 1951 is a radical departure from Pollock’s earlier drip paintings. Echo: Number 15, 1951, though abstract, flirts with figuration.
Pollock wrote in a letter to a friend, “I’ve had a period of drawing on canvas in black—with some of my early images coming thru—think the non-objectivists will find them disturbing—and the kids who think it simple to splash a Pollock out."
Oil and enamel paint on canvas. (1950)
One: Number 31, 1950 is a masterpiece of the “drip” technique and among the largest of Pollock’s paintings. Begun approximately three years after his first painting in this style, the work is evidence of the artist’s skill and technical prowess. Calligraphic, looping cords of color animate and energize every inch of the composition, which seems to expand visually, despite its already enormous size. As he did for all his drip paintings, Pollock painted One: Number 31, 1950 with the canvas lying on the floor.
“On the floor I am more at ease,” he said. “I feel nearer, more a part of the painting since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.”
IVAN ALBRIGHT
Oil on canvas. (1943-1944)
Ivan Albright painted this portrait for the Oscar-winning movie adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 1891 novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
In Wilde's tale, Dorian Gray commissions a portrait of himself as an attractive young man and later trades his soul for an ever-youthful appearance. Gray then leads a dissolute and evil life while his painted representation rots and decays, revealing the extent of his moral corruption.
Although the movie was shot in black and white, director Albert Lewin filmed the painted portrait in color to emphasize Gray's shocking transformation.
OTHER MODERNS
CHRISTOPHER WOOL
Enamel on aluminum. (1990)
The Cat In Bag piece is part of a series of language-based black-and-white paintings Wool began in the mid-1980s. While he wrote many of the phrases he used in these works himself, he borrowed or adapted others from alternative sources.
This line appears in the 1957 movie "Sweet Smell of Success." It's uttered by one of the characters to indicate that a dirty job has been completed. Wool recalls being struck by the poetry of the phrase and its sinister terseness.
JASPER JOHNS
Oil on canvas. (1961)
Reflecting on his choice of easily recognizable images, Johns said that he was interested in "the idea of knowing an image rather than just seeing it out of the corner of your eye." The map of the United States is "seen and not looked at, not examined."
Preserving the overall proportions of the country and the shape of its states, Johns's energetic application of paint subverts the conventions of cartography, as do the stenciled names of states, such as Colorado, which is repeated in several locations.
Map invites close inspection because its content is both familiar and imaginary.
JIM DINE
Oil on canvas surmounted by a board on which painted tools hang from hooks. (1962)
MoMA only loaned three of the Five Feet of Colorful Tools.
ATSUKO TANAKA
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. (1964)
The colorful circles and circuitous lines that compose this painting evolved from Tanaka's performance Electric Dress, which premiered a decade before, in which she wore two hundred blinking incandescent lightbulbs and tubes covered with red, blue, yellow, and green enamel paint.
The painting vividly showcases the artist's application of layers and skeins of multicolored acrylic paint on the canvas as it lay on the floor.
Such a performative practice was typical of members of Gutai, a group of Japanese artists (including Tanaka) active between 1954 and 1972. Gutai means "embodiment" or "concrete"; through their experimental works, these artists aimed to bring materials together with the human spirit.
BARBIE
ON LOAN FROM THE MAYOR OF MOOSEVILLE'S PERSONAL COLLECTION
BRIAN PALMER
Acrylic paint on canvas. (1999)
Barbie, by Oklahoma artist Brian Palmer, was first shown at Iguana Lounge in Oklahoma City in 1999. The piece was inspired by Barbie #5, circa 1961.
Barbie originally came with a black and white zebra fur frame but the frame has been removed to preserve it.
NUMBER 148
ON LOAN FROM PHILBROOK MUSEUM OF ART - TULSA, OKLAHOMA
LEONARDO DREW
Mixed Medium. (2010)
This piece has been altered for the MAM exhibit. In the original, the sculpture is solid black. Under the MAM lights, however, brown hues pop off the structure.
MYSTERY ART
ON LOAN FROM PHILBROOK MUSEUM OF ART - TULSA, OKLAHOMA
WE HAVE NO IDEA
Paint on canvas. (2010)
We have no idea who created this piece. It came to us with no information or identification number. It quite possibly could be the work of one of the Philbrook Museum of Art curator's kids.
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