The Park Avenue Bank presents Andy Warhol ~ Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century

Written by Ashlee Scotti Wednesday, 14 September 2011 20:02

NEW YORK CITY - The Gallery at The Park Avenue Bank presents Andy Warhol: Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century through March 2, 2007.  This edition of silk-screen prints by Andy Warhol (1928-1987), one of the most important artists of the late twentieth century, is from the permanent collection of The Jewish Museum, the preeminent U.S. institution exploring 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture.  The MEET A MUSEUM program offers exhibitions from participating museums in its gallery, located in midtown Manhattan.  The Park Avenue Bank has ushered in a new era for banking by displaying rare artwork pieces to its customers from museums around the globe at its main retail branch right in the heart of New York City.

About Andy Warhol: Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century Featured in the ten prints are:

• Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), celebrated French actress
  
• Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), first Jewish judge of the United States Supreme Court
  
• Martin Buber (1878-1965), renowned philosopher and educator
  
• Albert Einstein (1897-1955), the theoretical physicist,
  
• Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology,
  
• Marx Brothers: Chico (1887-1961), Groucho (1890-1977), Harpo (1888-1964);vaudeville, stage and film comedians,
  
• Golda Meir (1898-1978), founders of the State of Israel, George Gershwin (1898-1937), distinguished American composer
  
• Franz Kafka (1883-1924),eminent novelist,
  
• Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), avant-garde American writer, poet and playwright
  

In Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, Warhol’s principal obsessions – fame, death, money, and art – are embroiled in a heady mix, and to an extent unprecedented in his work.  As a whole, the series is notable for a new language of color, geometric shape and incisive line. Warhol’s insistence that the subjects be deceased invests the series with an inescapable feeling of mortality.  The faces of the dead appear as behind a tissue of modernity.  As individuals they belong in the past, while their image persists in the present.  The collective achievements of this group changed the course of the twentieth century and may be said to have influenced every aspect of human experience.

Warhol’s treatment of these images is noticeably different from his contemporary portraits.  The portraits are not glamorized. Instead, the tension sustained between photograph and abstraction focuses the issue of their fame.  Warhol presents these individuals’ iconic status as the outcome of a complex metamorphosis.  The real has been transformed into a glorious, poignant, other-worldly abstraction. The collective achievements of this group changed the course of the twentieth century and may be said to have influenced every aspect of human experience.  Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, a series of prints created in 1980.

Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, a series of prints created in 1980 by an innovative artist who became fascinated with a group of influential Jewish figures – a pantheon of great thinkers, politicians, performers, musicians and writers – is a recent gift of Lorraine and Martin Beitler to The Jewish Museum's permanent collection.  Works from this series were first shown at The Jewish Museum in 1980 and will be shown again in 2008.

In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol resurrected a genre that had fallen drastically in critical estimation.  He then revived that tradition of portraiture through the creation of a new relationship between photography and painting.  Obsessed with fame and media hype, he exploited the vast riches of reproducible images that flooded popular culture and made icons of celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.  In Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, Warhol's principal obsessions – fame, death, money, and art – are embroiled in a heady mix, and to an extent unprecedented in his work.  As a whole, the series is notable for a new language of color, geometric shape and incisive line.  These elements infiltrate the photographic context, accentuating, animating, obscuring and dividing particular details.  Warhol's insistence that the subjects be deceased invests the series with an inescapable feeling of mortality.  The faces of the dead appear as behind a tissue of modernity.  As individuals they belong in the past, while their image persists in the present. Warhol's treatment of these images is noticeably different from his contemporary portraits.  The portraits are not glamorized.  Instead, the tension sustained between photograph and abstraction focuses the issue of their fame.  Warhol presents these individuals iconic status as the outcome of a complex metamorphosis.  The real has been transformed into a glorious, poignant, other-worldly abstraction.

Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century was conceived by art dealer Ronald Feldman.  Warhol was immediately enthusiastic as the names of Einstein and Freud were proposed and initially argued that the series should be called The Jewish Geniuses.  In this work, Warhol gives the viewer the chance to think about the nature and imagery of fame in an increasingly media saturated world. 

MEET A MUSEUM Exhibition Program
The MEET A MUSEUM exhibition program is a one-of-a-kind experience that offers banking customers the opportunity to view original art collections as they conduct their banking transactions right in the heart of the bank’s Manhattan midtown branch, at The Park Avenue Bank was developed in 2006 by its curator/director Martin Mullin to promote the Bank’s desire to play an increasingly active role in New York’s cultural life.  Charles I. Announce, Sr., President and CEO of The Park Avenue Bank, states, “MEET A MUSEUM exhibition program is conducive with the Bank’s mission, to serve the community in which we are based and enrich the ordinary banking experience. “  Mr. Announce added, “hosting The Jewish Museum and the work of Andy Warhol here at our gallery is a great honor and adds further scope and depth to our endeavors..”  Participating museums in MEET A MUSEUM exhibition program include The Rubin Museum, New York., NY, The Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, The Herbert IF. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT.