Andy Warhol's 'Silver Clouds' at St Louis University's MOCRA

Monday, 11 September 2006 14:43

St. Louis, MO - MOCRA introduced St. Louis audiences to Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds in 2001 and reprised the exhibit in 2002.  Now, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Clouds’ debut at New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery, the St. Louis community is invited to experience the Clouds one last time at MOCRA.  Mercurial and buoyant, these pillow-shaped silver Mylar balloons roam the air currents of MOCRA’s spacious nave gallery and respond to the touch of the viewer. The Clouds installation is a visual, auditory and tactile experience that appeals immediately to the child in everyone.

Andy Warhol (1928–87) is among the most notable and controversial of twentieth-century artists.  He worked in many media, including painting, sculpture, filmmaking, and publishing.  Though best known for his images of consumer culture icons like Campbell’s soup cans and pop icons like Marilyn Monroe, Warhol’s wide-ranging artistic legacy has been explored with a recent major retrospective show in Berlin, London, and Los Angeles.  Some art historians have detected a sensitivity to religious imagery in Warhol’s work, perhaps influenced by his lifelong ties to the Carpatho-Rusyn Byzantine Catholic Church.  Dr. Jane Daggett Dillenberger has examined this aspect in her groundbreaking work, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol.  It is from this vantage point that MOCRA presents the Silver Clouds.

Warhol explored new technology and media throughout his career and engaged in a number of fruitful collaborations with people in a variety of disciplines.  The Silver Clouds were created with the assistance of engineer Billy Klüver (1927–2004), who worked with other notable artists such as John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg.  They were later incorporated into a 1968 dance piece by choreographer Merce Cunningham titled "Rainforest".

One St. Louis sixth grader who visited the earlier Silver Clouds installations at MOCRA in 2001 and 2002 described the Clouds as “dazzling, stunning, dancing, unreal, humble, acrobatic, joyous, amazing, complete, magical pillowy.”

MOCRA anticipates offering several programs in conjunction with the Silver Clouds exhibition.  Further details, dates and times will be forthcoming.  MOCRA is located at 3700 West Pine Mall on the campus of Saint Louis University.

Visit http://mocra.slu.edu/