The Warhol exhibition that was held in the SMCS museum for contemporary art in Amsterdam was an interesting event and had a strong presence thinking about the fact that the huge volume of the work that the artist made during his lifetime was selected and compressed in one floor of the museum . Six huge rooms contained a retrospective of his work starting from the first graphic experiments that the artist made until the films and the works that where expressed trough different mediums . The event was one of the most interesting events that I saw , not because of the fact that the exhibition was dedicated to this famous artist and not because of the fact that that a big volume of people know him , but because the event left in my personal view a different way of looking at things and at his work both technically , spiritually and historically (he worked as an artist in a period of massive changes that where happening in the american culture ) His elusive personality is present all in all the works and it can be seen in the way the exhibition was organised .
The extent of his influence is big and the exhibition in it's own rights brought together artists and people from all kinds of different field together transforming in this way the opening night of the event in a mixed space full of artists from different scenes . The work of the artist cannot be included in a category because of his avant garde approach and because of the fact that his art was always in front of the main trend of the time we can consider Warhol a visionary , a multilayered personality with activity in all kinds of different medium of expression and a commentator of the consumer based american society of that time . Warhol was a bridge between the unseen world of the art and the commercial successful art world . He was the concept person and the person that was creating the space for things to happen . He was present in his own work and his artist persona was a work of art in his own right . He was a media darling and a media generator in his own right . he saw things always different from the outer artists of the time and his personal biography can be seen as an independent piece of art . His studio was a place that was an intense event generator full of people that where different and adopted a different way of life from the mundane way or what we can call cliche normal life that citizens where living at that time . He produced art on an assembly line like way of working transforming his studio in an art factory witch had it's still center in the personality of Warhol.
This event had a different aura from the rest of art exhibitions , thing where regarded more serious and the amount of work that had been presented was quite huge and presented in a sort of historical and biographical way starting from the early beginnings of the artist as a commercial graphician to the opening of the factory and the stages of transformations trough witch he went in becoming one of the giant sized artist of the previous century . His work combined commercial with non commercial concepts everyday objects that he gave them a different meaning as an artist and creator . More or less everyone was impressed by the exhibition that was organised in the way that as part of the audience you felt like being teleported back in time in the sixties and seventies period where the zeitgeist was related to the hippy movement and to and musical and club and disco scene of the seventies . The work that was in the exhibition brought together experimental works with work trough you could know the anturage of the artist because the actors and the people that had been part of his work where not professional they where everyday people that got caught up the the factory world and party scene that surrounded Warhol .
He had a strong and huge influence making out of soup cans works of art and playing with avant garde concepts like the ready made concept invented by the dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp .
He became in a sort time and local and international figure present in almost every aspect related to the western world art world > the place where he started working as an artist was the New york scene of the 70 'es that was and still is considered by many as the final stage in the western culture evolution so phisicaly and conceptually that is the place that holds the essence of the meaning of the avant garde concept and expression .
The exhibition had a strong resonance people from all parts of europe heard about the event and joined it as presences this gave the space a more international appeal and on a personal level things where quite good because of the visits of my friends from east that came with the purpose of seeing and experiencing the fascinating world on Warhol .
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