But there’s a side of Warhol you haven’t seen, and it’s at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art — his passion for cars.
Climbing the staircase of the museum, FAU students anticipate seeing colorful pop art interpretations of twentieth century cars such as a red Mercedes Benz. From works done on silk-screen to tracing paper, Warhol and Cars features Warhol’s work with cars throughout history.
With more than 40 pieces, the entire exhibit focuses on Warhol’s fascination with cars, instead of the usual Campbells soup cans and pop art versions of Marilyn Monroe.
The exhibit has been traveling the country and is now temporarily settling in the museum only 381 feet from FAU’s Fort Lauderdale campus from Nov. 10, 2012, and will continue until Feb. 10.
Warhol’s quote is plastered in navy blue letters across the museum’s gray wall under the the name of the exhibit. “I think of myself as an American artist … I’ve heard it said that my paintings are as much a part of the fashionable world as clothes and cars.”
All of the works come from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Penn. which regularly hosts traveling exhibits like this one. According to the museum’s website, more than eight million people have attended the traveling exhibits the museum regularly holds across the world.
Senior architecture major Emilia Fischer has yet to visit the exhibit, but is looking forward to it “for the history aspect and the process of it.”
“I was by myself. There was nobody else in there,” said third year architecture major Catheryn Espino. “I guess [visitors] didn’t know they could go in there. But it was nice to have the balloons around you.”
Warhol’s technique with his pop art consisted of multiple layering of saturated colors to achieve unique looking pictures of manufactured products and celebrities. One wall showcases a variety of different layers Warhol used for one picture of a truck. The truck is translucent and layered over different colored backgrounds in each picture, demonstrating the different ways Warhol could use this technique. In one picture, the background is red, while in another, the background is blue.
Guests can make their own layers for this picture too. On a magnetic board, they can use pictures drawn by themselves or other guests and layer them together, then place the translucent picture of the truck over all of it.
For an extra glimpse into Warhol’s life, guests can scan QR codes which take them to videos online, such as a video on youtube.com of Warhol eating a Burger King hamburger.
Not only are guests able to watch Warhol online, but the exhibit also showcases a short film of Warhol painting a racecar, an original BMW M-1. The film took place in 1979 for the BMW Art Race Car Projects and is projected onto a blank wall for visitors to sit and watch.
“It was interesting to see him in action,” Catheryn Espino said. “I didn’t know that he painted a car, so it was nice to see it and how it came out.”
Organized by the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, this exhibit will be running at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art until Feb. 10. Students get in at a discounted price of $5.
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[title type=”h2″]YOU DON’T SAY[/title]
“What did you think of the exhibit?”
“I love it. I love Andy Warhol’s work. It was interesting to see another part of his work. I never saw a whole collection about his cars.”
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Brittni Durie, third year, architecture
“I liked the art exhibit a lot because I mean, I love cars, it’s something I enjoy. And then the artistic aspect, how he changed colors, how he did the Silver Cloud exhibit, I really liked all that stuff.”
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