Andy Warhol 50 Years Later

Andy Warhol

For those who have never visited Palm Springs, all they might think about is that this is a small deserted desert town. In fact, I can vividly remember my first visit in 1959. My aunt and uncle lived in Highland Park, a part of Los Angeles, and on our first visit to Los Angeles, we drove out to Palm Springs for a days visit. It was an amazingly hot day, a kind of day we rarely if ever saw in Portland, OR. We had an old 1951 Nash Ambassador with, in those days, NO air conditioning. 

   What surprised me was that the city looked deserted. There were no cars on the streets, no people walking anywhere, even the stores looked empty. We finally saw one of the local denizens so tan and wrinkled, barely clothed in a tiny bikini; she looked like a walnut. Little did I know back then that in 57 years I would return to live.

   While Palm Springs today has about 45,000 people and the whole Coachella Valley has probably about 500,000 with small towns strung out along the I-10 freeway, many parts still look pretty barren. Many would prefer it stayed that way. Trust me, the population nearly doubles in the winter with the flight of the snowbirds from up north. There are as many out-of-state license plates as locals on crowded streets. This year, especially, restaurants are filled with locals AND tourists.

Palm Springs Art Museum decked out for the Warhol Exhibit

   What I discovered was that for its size, it is one of the most vibrant places on earth. There is always something (often many somethings) to do every weekend and you seriously can't do them all. We've had a noted film festival, a car auction, home show, last weekend a famous world class art show in La Quinta, the air museum has events every weekend, Modernism Week just finished where for 11 days art and design of the 1950's is celebrated with people coming from all over the world to speak and see the treasures from the past, and this is just early March!

 There is also a great deal of wealth here and has been for many decades. Before WW II Palm Springs was the getaway for many of Hollywood's greats. Even after the war it was an important getaway and many major streets are named for the famous both in Hollywood, song or politics.

   One of the great finds, for me as an artist, is the Palm Springs Art Museum. They have an amazing collection but more importantly put on some of the finest exhibitions you can see anywhere. Even more amazing is that every Thursday, from 4 pm - 8 pm the museum is free. Really!

An original page from one of his illustrated books

   In January there was an exhibition of images by photographer Michael Childers of drag queens and such with many taken of Andy Warhol called "Having A Ball." Childers captured Warhol throughout much of his artistic life until is untimely end at the age of 58.

   On March 3rd an exhibition of Warhol's prints, drawings and images owned by the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation of Portland, OR, opened. It was the perfect companion piece to the earlier photography exhibit. They are running concurrently and are seamless.

   For me, this exhibit brought back many memories. His antics were reported in the newspapers and TV news of the day, a time when everyone watched one of only three national TV channels. I can remember we giggled at his silkscreens of Marilyn Monroe and Chairman Mao. How on earth could an image of a Campbell's soup can or a Brillo Box, something that just about every home had at the time, be considered art? Portland was where I grew up so I vaguely remember seeing some of his work at the Portland Art Museum. I was surprised to discover this exhibit was from a collection in Portland.

You can laugh today but these are worth a fortune!

   In college though, as a Journalism / Advertising major, he was taken more seriously. We learned that those packages were carefully designed down to the colors to attract the shoppers eye. Color meant everything and even donated the product type. Warhol had recognized this and worked to make us aware of this fact. His background, in fact, was from the illustrative side of commercial art!

   Most of his career is shown from his early shoe designs, the story books he wrote moving on to the amazing silkscreens he made. In fact one of the first things you see entering the museum is a large collection of silkscreens showing the steps necessary to make one of his finished silkscreens. It was, we realized, how he was able to make such a variety of Marilyn's or Chairman Mao's. The screens are always the same, it was the colors used that changed them.

Warhol's screen steps to make a print

Add caption

  For me, this exhibit brought back many memories. The sheet of S&H Green stamps was a blast to the past. Every mother collected them and a merchant who didn't give them out for purchases, did so at their peril. Housewives would just shop somewhere else. To see the many images of Mick Jaeger and realize Warhol had designed the infamous "Sticky Fingers" record cover with Jaeger in tight jeans, a bulging crotch and a working zipper (something we had to pull from the shelves of Kmart's), made me realize, maybe for the first time, how influential he was.

Chairman Mao

   His talents were many - commercial illustration, advertising, silk screens worth millions today, photography, sculpture and dabbling in some risqué Gay films, made him famous in ways not known today.

   The museum broke the galleries into the periods of his creative life and I realized for the first time that his famous Marilyn and Mao silkscreens were done when I was still in high school. By the time I started college in 1963 his work was well  known and shown everywhere. Little did anyone at the time think that this was art. The critics of the era frothed at the mouth dismissing his works as trash. However, it did resonate with the public and, as we clearly saw, with the Schnitzer family of Portland, OR. This collection must be valued now in the millions.

Mick Jager portraits

    If anything, looking at it now, I realized what I had forgotten

from my college days. Design can be everything. To see his silkscreens of the famous Chanel #5 bottle, Apple's rainbow colored Apple for the new MacIntosh computer, the famous portraits of Mao, and Marilyn, Marx Brothers, even George Gershwin, you realized what design was all about. 

   It's more about seeing, about presenting something that moves the audience ... be it to buy or admire, to consider and often to recognize. 

Alan with the Marilyn Diptych. She died
around the time these were made

  

   He died at 58 due to complications of gall bladder surgery. Yet in that time his work was prodigious. There are few artists today that have left such a legacy and have profoundly altered the way we consider art. It was interesting to hear the murmurs of the crowd, in most cases my age or thereabouts, also recount their memories of him and the products he featured. Young or old though, I felt many recognized what he was trying to show us, how images connect our lives and times.

 

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where the emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! Be sure to check my re-opened ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I am adding many new and exciting, collectible products. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!