Article - Religious motifs
The aim of this paper by Marek
Kucharski was to analyze the religious motifs which permeate Andy Warhol’s
artistic output. Marek puts special emphasis on the motif of the icon, the
concept of which was completely redefined in his serigraphic realizations. He
also focuses on the idiosyncratic character of religious references which,
always present in Warhol’s artistic production, started to dominate in his work
towards the end of his life.
The complexity of Warhol’s approach
towards pop art can be proved by the dualism which consistently manifested
itself in the binary oppositions that can be observed in his artistic oeuvre:
highbrow culture – lowbrow culture, artistic individualism – mass-production,
anonymity – fame, the private – the public, the East – the West, the sacred –
the profane. Similar dichotomies characterize his religious paintings.
Warhol’s involvement in applying
religious motifs in his productions was a gradual process which actually
spanned the whole period of his artistic activity. When analyzing his visual
realizations in a religious context, one can distinguish four periods during
which his works displayed religious or quasi-religious propensities: the
earliest was the 1950s – the beginnings of Warhol’s activity as a graphic
designer in New York. It was then that, besides the chiefly commercial projects,
he also produced a series of religious designs, which is best exemplified by
the Christmas cards for Tiffany & Co. The next period was the 1960s – a time
dominated by the creation of iconic representations of objects of everyday use and
portraits of American figures from the world of politics and pop culture. It
was also a period that witnessed his series focusing on such issues as race
riots, car crashes, suicides, H-bomb explosions, and images of electric chairs,
as well as photographs of the thirteen most wanted men. The 1970s saw the
continuation of this trend with a tendency towards painting artistically
sophisticated portraits; this led to his production of the series of Skulls and
self-portraits with skulls, as well as the abstract Shadows. And finally the
1980s – the decade during which Warhol continued painting portraits and
embarked on creating travesties of the classic Renaissance paintings with
special regard to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. It was also around that time
that Warhol produced his series of Crosses and Eggs.
Download:
AnglicaIV.pdf (Size: 2231569 bytes) Kucharski Marek. 2015. Religious Motifs in Andy Warhols Selected Visual Realizations. Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis: Studia Anglica IV. 45-56 |