Godfather of Pop “Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal” Asian tour in Hong Kong opened at Hong Kong Museum of Art, located on the shore of Victoria Harbour, around the empty space, the slogan in the huge pink poster is striking to the eye: POP ART IS FOR EVERYONE.
The exhibition was specially organized to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and features more than three hundred and seventy items ranging from the 1950s to the 1980s, including oil paintings, manuscripts, photographs, screen prints, sculptures, as well as films and videos. There are four halls featuring the works from different periods, respectively themed “Life in New York”, “Times of Factory”, “Shiny Starlight”, and “Life is too short”.
The section themed “Life in New York”, mainly features Warhol’s early works, it is interesting that his works in the 1950s were signed by the artist’s mother, because Warhol loved his mother’s handwriting. “Times of Factory” features several classic works, including “Campbell’s Soup Cans” series, the well-known portrait of “Marilyn”, and the “Brillo Box”, a masterpiece of the pop art, etc., which have gone down in the history of modern art, still shocking our hearts. Another striking artwork is an interactive installation entitled “Silver Clouds”. An original work is a glass space filled with silver balloons, and the audience goes between the silver clouds floating in the air, and played games despite constraint and others’ views. All the things were boiled down to a game, a rave party. The section of “Shiny Starlight” features Warhol’s portraits of the celebrities in the 1970s, where we can see how a star performing in the aura of other stars. The fourth hall features a large number of photographs of Warhol’s attending social occasions, the giant painting “Reflection (Spirit of the Times)”, as well as his last “Self-Portrait”. In addition, there are two other art projects: “Time Capsule” and “Children’s Gallery”. You could occasionally find some Warhol’s quotations on the wall, for example: “I've never met a person I couldn’t call a beauty”, because of his amazing worldview that was full of love, he was given more awards to discover more beauties by God. There is a popular interactive installation at the entrance of the exhibition, which instantly processes the photos of the audience taken in the hall, into chromatic portraits, projected on the screen of the wall, Warhol said, “In the future everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes”, it regards honor his prophecy. A data entry shows on the screen: 43168 people have been famous, you're the next one. Faced with such an invitation, do you feel a commotion of honorary craving in your heart? It is ironic that there is a line of small inscriptions that states, “The uploaded portraits will be deleted automatically after seven days”, for not only in the protection of the right of portraits, but also giving the audience thoughts of the emptiness of fame.
The exhibition is closing on March 31, so that Pop Art lovers can seize this opportunity to visit it at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, to extent the fame of Andy Warhol, the master of Pop Art, a further 15 minutes.
Journalist: Chen Chuqing/CAFA ART INFO from Shenzhen
Translated by Chen Peihua/CAFA ART INFO
