Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-cola bottles and Marilyn Monroe. Welcome to the world of Andy Warhol, currently on display at Taiwan Democracy Hall (formerly known as Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall) through March 29.
For its Taipei show, the touring exhibition has assembled more than 120 pieces made, certified or signed by Warhol, making it almost twice as large as the exhibition’s European tours, which ended in Italy last year, according to curator Hsu Fen-land (徐芬蘭).
“We are all too familiar with Warhol’s art, but what we see in magazines is nowhere near the original works. I always tell people to appreciate the displays from the side so as to see the layers of prints that convey a remarkable amount of details and refinements,” said Hsu, who is also a manager at Timsort, S. L., one of the three European art and cultural agencies that organized the exhibition to commemorate what would have been the artist’s 80th birthday.
This is the first large-scale exhibition in Taiwan that systematically introduces Warhol’s work to the country. Hsu presents Warhol as an artist known for breaking conventions through his innovative creative ventures.
Warhol took pop art to a new level, from making art out of mass-produced commodities to mass producing art itself — art, moreover, that could be owned and enjoyed by the masses as exemplified in his Campbell’s Soup Dress (1968) and Campbell’s Soup Can on Shopping Bag (1966), as well as Banana (1966) and the album cover for The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967).
The exhibition begins with works from Warhol’s lesser-known early period in 1950s, during which time the son of working-class immigrants from Czechoslovakia had already achieved a measure of success in New York City as a commercial illustrator. An important work that contains all the archetypal elements of what would later become Warhol’s signature style, A Golden Book (1957), comprises 20 hand-bound drawings created using the blotted-line technique that was characteristic of the artist’s early works. The technique, which involved drawing in ink on a non-absorbent surface and then pressing a piece of paper to the surface before the ink dried, gave the resulting work a graphic look and was an early indication of Warhol’s interest in duplication and repetition.
Another section of the exhibition is dedicated to Warhol’s portraits of famous people that characterized much of his output in the 1970s. These wow-inducing displays include Mao (1972), Jimmy Carter (1975) and Liza Minnelli (1978). A portrait of Mick Jagger (1975) is co-signed by the artist and his model, another first in art history.
Also on display is the Space Fruit series (1978), which was screen-printed on Plexiglas, and Jose Beuys (1981), which was screen-printed on a laundry bag, both of which show Warhol’s experimentation with new materials.
Meanwhile, After Munch (1984) serves as an example of Warhol revisiting the worlds of great figures in the history of Western art, such as Edvard Munch and Leonardo da Vinci.
Because of budgetary restraints, Warhol’s films, his work as a music producer, and his interest in religion, as seen in Last Supper (1986), are left unexplored. And Hsu’s original plan to project Warhol’s image of Mao Zedong (毛澤東) onto the vast white walls outside Taiwan Democracy Hall was aborted because it was too “politically sensitive.”
“It has never been done ... If Warhol were alive, he would definitely sign the wall, making it a piece of his art,” Hsu said.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50