Two celebrity photography exhibitions. Where is Elvis? The Man and His Reflection and Douglas Gordon: Blind Star.
To celebrate Andy Warhol's 75th
birthday, The Andy Warhol Museum announces that it will present two
star-studded photography exhibitions featuring Elvis Presley, Marilyn
Monroe, Bette Davis and many of Warhol's favorite celebrities and icons.
The exhibitions, Where is Elvis? The Man and His Reflection and Douglas
Gordon: Blind Star will be on view at The Warhol June 15 through August
31, 2003. Their opening will kick off a series of programs, events and
exhibitions planned for a summer-long Warhol birthday celebration.
Where is Elvis? The Man and His Reflection
One of Andy Warhol's most famous works, and a standout piece in The
Warhol's permanent collection is a 1963 silkscreen of a young,
gun-slinging Elvis Presley, Elvis (Eleven Times). The source photograph
for the work, a 1960 publicity shot for the western film, Flaming Star, is
one of more than 70 photographs of Elvis included in the exhibition Where
is Elvis? The Man and His Reflection. One of the world's most photographed
and photogenic individuals, Elvis seemed to live life in front of the
camera - from public to the most private displays. From his hip-swinging
appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, to his induction in the U.S. Army,
cameras documented the making of a cultural icon. Where Is Elvis? reveals
some of the defining moments of Elvis's rise to stardom in the 1950s and
1960s as captured and interpreted by the photographers who were there to
witness it all.
On view with Warhol's Elvis (Eleven Times) in the Museum's first floor
gallery, the exhibition includes black and white photographs by artists
Norman Bergsma, Roger Marshutz, Ernest Withers, Bill Avery, and Bill Ray,
among others. An often-published photograph by Marshutz, taken at a 1956
concert in Tupelo, Mississippi, depicts Elvis straddling the microphone to
reach out to the outstretched hands of his hungry audience. In a 1958
photograph, Bergsma captures Elvis, the good son, kissing his mother on
the cheek. Where is Elvis? also includes many works by renowned
photographer Alfred Wertheimer, who created a series of candid and
intimate images of Elvis while working for RCA in 1956. Wertheimer was one
of the last photographers to experience a kind of intimacy with his famous
subject, snapping his portfolio just before Elvis established
international recognition and his manager, Colonel Parker, began
controlling every public image of his star.
Elvis-related material from The Warhol's archives will also be on view.
The exhibition was originally organized by Karen Marks of the Howard
Greenberg Gallery, New York City. The presentation at The Warhol is
curated by John W. Smith, assistant director for collections and research.
_________
Douglas Gordon: Blind Star
From the Scottish-born artist, Douglas Gordon, a never-before-seen series
of approximately 100 collaged photographs of Hollywood glamour publicity
stills featuring celebrities from the 1940s and 1950s, including Cary
Grant, Kim Novak, Bette Davis and Marilyn Monroe. Concerned with media,
communication technologies and representation, much of Gordon's previous
work has explored themes such as trust, guilt, madness, confession,
deception, and doubling through film, video, photography and the use of
appropriated material. He is best known for his video installations that
manipulate and re-present classic Hollywood films such as Psycho and The
Searchers, but is equally active with photography and text works. Gordon
has described his work as being, "about researching, about memory, about
stories that happened, films I saw... I'm interested in finding out what
happens when you look at something so long, it disappears. You look at a
picture, you start looking through the picture and you get to the other
side- and then you go back to the front view." Gordon is considered one of
the most important artists of his generation and was awarded Tate
Britain's Turner Prize in 1996 for his innovative use of film, video and
text. The exhibition will be on view on The Warhol's fourth floor.
The Andy Warhol Museum receives state arts funding support through a grant
from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a
federal agency. The 2003 exhibition program has been supported, in part,
by The Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, Inc.
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.
Phone: 412.237.8300
Hours: Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sat, and Sun 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Fri, 10 a.m. - 10 p.m.
Mon closed
Admission: Members - free
Good Fridays - 5-10 p.m., $3 cover
Adults - $8, Sr. Citizens - $7, Children/Students - $4
The Warhol Store/The Warhol Café - free
The Andy Warhol Museum
One of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
117 Sandusky Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
T 412.237.8339
F 412.237.8340