It looks like my mind was already unconsciously gravitating towards the San Jose Museum of Art when I picked a photo for the previous blog entry on the Dancin' Downtown event. On Sunday I actually physically ended up in the museum. It started out as a short visit to the facilities, but I strayed, leaving my friends to watch the dance pageantry by themselves. I was sucked in by a selection of prints on loan from The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. I thought I might just take a quick look around, not expecting too much. I had been disappointed by the Diane Arbus retrospective at SFMOMA years back, as well as the Annie Leibovitz show last summer. There was no added dimension; the original prints didn't offer any insight beyond what the familiar reproductions had to offer. I expected the Warhol prints to fall in the same category--- you've seen a decent coffee table book, you've essentially seen the artwork. To my surprise I found that there's more depth to the Warhols, in particular the celebrity prints. I liked how a series of Ingrid Bergman images from the Eighties dissolved on close inspection into pure color and penciled lines next to modulated areas delivering the illusion of 3 dimensionality. I discovered that Liz and Marilyn look more like sinister clowns than glamorous divas in a way I hadn't noticed before. Andy looks fragile in late self portraits, Beuys terrified. Death masks of cultural icons. Brilliantly, gaudily colored mortality pressed through silk screens. Through Sunday, May 31, 2009
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