Andy Warhol Museum presents Warhol Headlines, an exhibition on view from October 14, 2012. Warhol: Headlines brings together works that the artist based largely on headlines from the tabloid news. Warhol had a lifelong obsession with the sensational side of contemporary news media, and examples of his source materials for the works of art are presented for comparison, revealing Warhol’s role as both editor and author.
Andy Warhol A Boy for Meg [2], 1962, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine, © 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The exhibition features 80 works representing the full range of Warhol’s practice from paintings, drawings, prints, photography, and sculpture to film, video, and television. An important theme that ran through Warhol’s entire career but has never before been examined in a major exhibition, the headline encompasses many of his key subjects, including celebrity, death, disaster, and current events. Warhol’s reach is indisputable, and his visual vocabulary has become a part of the vernacular from which it originally came, making him as ubiquitous as the 24-hour news cycle itself.
This exhibition, organized by the National Gallery of Art opened in the fall of 2011, and inspired events throughout the nation’s capital. Dubbed “Warhol Off the Mall,” the festival included showings of I Shot Andy Warhol and a live multi-media performance based on Warhol’s electric newspaper at Busboys & Poets, a popular restaurant and performance space; Downtown Scene NY film festival; and a photo booth where participants donned the iconic fright wigs at the first (e)merge Art Fair. The Gallery and the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, which showed Andy Warhol: Shadows, partnered for enhanced programming and promotion, calling it “Warhol On the Mall.” The exhibition then traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, where it opened at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in February 2012. In June, Warhol: Headlines opened at the Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna, in Rome, Italy.
Warhol scoured newspapers for their stories and images, some of which he saved without using them in his art. Those headlines he made into works of art, presented one epic account of post–World War II America and the media age. He also quoted directly from newspapers, drawing visual reference from the powerful media narratives.
About The Andy Warhol Museum
Located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the place of Andy Warhol’s birth, The Warhol is one of the most comprehensive single-artist museums in the world. The Andy Warhol Museum is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. Additional information about The Warhol is available at www.warhol.org