Seattle Art Museum: Exhibition Information

Through a selection of Andy Warhol’s media works, this exhibition will offer a focused and provocative experience of Warhol’s photography and film portraits. Unfolding in five of the special exhibition galleries, the exhibition includes Polaroids, photobooth strips and sewn photographs, presented alongside Warhol’s Screen Tests, which will be projected in two of the galleries devoted to these moving images.

love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death includes works that compel us to consider the artist’s fascination with all things ephemeral, from beauty and youth to celebrity status. Including photographs and videos dating from the 1960s through the early 1980s—two decades in which the artist’s work had tremendous impact on contemporary art production and culture—the exhibition encourages readings of powerful themes such as fame, desire and identity construction, as well as anxiety and isolation, which often accompany stardom. In a series of self-portraits, with props or disguises such as wigs and women’s clothing, Warhol exposes his obsession with his own image and his desire to probe and push the boundaries of identity and self-invention.

love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death — Andy Warhol Media Works is on view concurrently with the exhibition Kurt and resonates with many of the works on view, as well as the exploration of fleeting celebrity, the effects it has on the celebrated, and the ways in which even a brief career can deeply move a generation.

Self-Portrait [with Skull], 1977, Andy Warhol, American, 1928–1987, Polaroid Polacolor [reprint], 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in., The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., © 2009 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ARS, New York

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