You don't Nomi me either, Love -Andy

Everyone knows Andy Warhol. He projected the image of the quintessential pretentious artist and just like Klaus Nomi, his image was very constructed. However, I personally find Warhol to be a lot more interesting because his persona is a lot more consciously constructed and it is as meticulous as it is annoying. He said he loved plastic and that he wanted to be plastic.

The lecture did not make any particular impression on me but I found it very interesting that Andy Warhol changed as an artist as a result of the assassination attempt on him. Warhol thoughts on the attack were: "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television."

The lecture was about Andy Warhol's work in his last decade and since I knew very little about his later works, I was all ears. I was disappointed to find that the lecture seemed to scream a lot of you-just-had-to-be-there and there wasn't really anything said that stuck to me or swayed my ever eager heart. I suppose the most I remembered about was how he revisted his earlier works and turned them into memento moris. I share Warhol's fascination with popular culture and popular imagery and find it interesting how he started to look at those very same objects/people that he treated as symbols of whimsy from a very different perspective after his brush with death. Makes me wonder what Hello Kitty would mean to me if someone attempts to kill me.

Anyway, I'm sure the exhibition is really great and a work of curatorial genius.

Milwaukee Art Museum - Andy Warhol: The Last Decade