Andy Warhol loved the shiny people. TIFF loves the shiny people too, having gradually turned its annual film festival into a red-carpet celebration of the movie stars with whom we are collectively on a first-name basis – and forever searching for new ways to bring said stars down to the Lightbox.
As TIFF’s director of exhibitions Laurel MacMillan explained yesterday, “a celebrity-themed Warhol exhibition would be a perfect fit for TIFF” … and here we are with Andy Warhol: Stars Of The Silver Screen, the largest exhibition yet to arrive in the Lightbox’s gallery space.
Stars Of The Silver Screen explores Warhol’s fascination with movie stars through his art and his archives, with over 1,000 pieces arranged to explore what Geralyn Huxley, curator of film and video at Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum (and co-curator of this exhibition with Matt Wrbican), described as “a rich thematic vein” running through all of his work.
Most of this material, Huxley said, has never been exhibited together before assembled in the gallery space, it’s like being plunged into Warhol’s head. Everything is interesting. Everything is collectible.
Warhol’s early years are represented by his first scrapbook, filled with publicity photos and clippings about the shiny people who fascinated him as a youth movie stills, press sheets and magazines, the Big Little Books that served as early novelizations of movies for children, three commemorative spoons with actors’ faces embossed on the handles.
There’s a selection of memorabilia from his collection, and some 200 8×10 publicity stills – the sort a celebrity’s agent would send you if you wrote a letter asking for an autograph – as well as a pair of Clark Gable’s shoes and a dress worn by Jean Harlow.
And then there’s Warhol’s own work. Early sketches of movie stars – including a striking line drawing of James Dean’s face in ballpoint pen – and hand-drawn copies of magazine ads.
I was particularly struck by Warhol’s graphite re-interpretation of a 1962 Maybelline ad featuring Hedy Lamarr: it straddles the line between amateurish replication and swooning fandom. It’s only art because Andy Warhol became famous. It’s a reflection of a reflection of reflected glory. But of course that was his whole thing.
In a break with previous exhibitions, which separated the gallery space into sections and steered patrons through a very specific path, the Warhol exhibition allows you to wander around more or less freely, with a floor plan of aisles instead of corridors.
Aimless drifting is possible and maybe even encouraged, perhaps to replicate the woozy, hall-of-mirrors effect of Warhol’s own fame. Publicity stills line one wall, Warhol’s own photos line another, forming a sort of Who’s Who of the 70s and early 80s: barely-posed photos of Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Reeve, Pia Zadora.
Glass cases house telegrams, studio press releases, another pair of shoes the episode of The Love Boat on which he guest-starred plays on a tiny screen next to a Jane Fonda diptych. It feels like there are silkscreens for days.
The original “Marilyn” is here – and like Dali’s “The Persistence Of Memory” it’s almost shockingly small as a physical object, its stature as art having long since outgrown its actual size. But it’s an endlessly fascinating piece, the almost painful Day-Glo colours obscuring Monroe’s features, suggesting the harsh light of fame consuming her even before she was gone. It’s a Banksy image, half a century early.
The gallery’s separated space houses a small re-creation of Warhol’s famed Silver Factory workspace, with various industrial items scattered around the area amongst photos of the artist and his collaborators at work. There’s a selection of videos – interviews, mostly – and Warhol’s famed screen tests are projected overhead in constant loops. This section is intended to be interactive: take a photo of yourself on the couch! Tweet a picture of the retro-cool film projector! Hashtag #Warhol!
Another participatory element, the Screen Test Machine, hides a video lens inside the housing of an old Bolex 16mm camera and offers visitors the chance to record their own Warhol-style screen test. (Here’s mine, which turned out a lot more Lynchian than I expected it to.)
The exhibition opens tomorrow (Friday October 30) and runs until January 24, 2016. It’s supported within the Lightbox by a selection of installations and art inspired by Warhol, and TIFF’s ongoing In Love With The Stars exhibit of celebrity photographs in the fourth-floor gallery.
There are also two film programs: Nothing Special: Andy Warhol’s Star System, which opens tomorrow (Friday October 30) and which José Teodoro explores in depth here, highlights Warhol’s 16mm work with Factory stars like Taylor Mead and Edie Sedgwick, while Liz & Marilyn: Black And White In Colour, which starts November 7, celebrates the studio icons (Taylor and Monroe, respectively) whose glamourous images fed Warhol’s own fascination with celebrity. Both programs will screen throughout the run of the exhibition.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
