Thirty Are Better Than One, an exhibition of over 100 artworks by Andy Warhol, curated by Peter M. Brant and drawn largely from the Brant Collections. The exhibition covers the entirety of Warhol’s illustrious career, from his early drawings and intimate Polaroids to instantly recognizable silkscreens and sculptures.
As per the Brant Foundation: "Thirty Are Better Than One takes its title from Warhol’s important artwork from 1963. The eponymous work depicts 30 scaled-down, silk-screened images of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, showcasing the acute interest in mechanical repetition, the excess of images, and the disruption of art world hierarchies that defined the artist’s practice. Highlighting Warhol’s unparalleled ability to chronicle the visual culture of his time, the exhibition at The Brant Foundation explores his avid experimentation with numerous media through a highly cultivated artistic language, bringing into focus the artist’s innumerable contributions to the Pop Art movement and 20th-century American art in a staggering display.
The exhibition includes a body of Warhol’s earliest works, made in the 1950s. After moving to New York, Warhol initially worked as a commercial illustrator, laying the groundwork for his future advances in the Pop Art movement. Ink, copper, and gold leaf recur as media during this formative period, which saw the creation of artworks such as Elvis Presley (Gold Boot) (1956), who was a frequent subject of Warhol’s work; and Mae West (1956), a fantastical copper leaf appliqué imagining the actress’s shoe.
In the 1960s, Warhol started working within the Pop Art movement and developed what is now his most notable style: the photographic silkscreen technique. The exhibition presents iconic images that reflect the growing idolization of the celebrity persona, such as Licorice Marilyn (1962) and Liz #5 (Early Colored Liz) (1963), and explores his use of everyday, commercial imagery, seen in his facsimiles of product packaging for Brillo pads and Campbell’s soup—some of his most instantly identifiable artworks. Works on view also include Most Wanted Men No. 5, Arthur Alvin M. (1964) and 12 Electric Chairs (1964), part of Warhol’s Death and Disasters series, which examined the darker uses of mass media and its displays of violence.
In the 1970s, Warhol experimented with abstraction and turned to new formats to produce work, although his obsession with image-making is seen throughout. The exhibition includes works from his Skulls series (1976), for which he worked from posed still-life photographs of skulls to capture seemingly endless investigations of light and color, as well as works in which he pared down his subjects to solely examine the effects of shadows.
In his later practice, Warhol reflected on faith, morality, and loss through the lens of his own Catholic upbringing, along with other subjects that were increasingly political in nature. The exhibition features some of the artist’s final works before his death in 1987, including works from his far-reaching 1986 series centered around Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Shown together, Warhol’s works explore not only his inventive appropriation of the imagery of popular culture, but also the contradictions that exist in American life."
The exhibition is on view from May 10 through July 30, 2023 at The Brant Foundation's East Village location.