'Factory Work': at the Brandywine River Museum

Written by Joseph Simpson Tuesday, 05 October 2010 02:18

CHADDS FORD, PA — Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth and Basquiat, on exhibition September 9 through November 19, 2006 at the Brandywine River Museum, explores the fascinating collaborations in the late 1970s and early 1980s between Pop artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and realist Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946), and between Warhol and New York graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988).  The exhibition provides clues to understanding these unique partnerships and offers examples of how these very different artists influenced and inspired each other.

Wyeth and Basquiat were young, independent artists with established reputations when Andy Warhol invited each of them to paint at the “Factory,” his New York studio.  Warhol mentored the younger artists who, in turn, enabled him to connect with new audiences in an evolving art world.

Wyeth, son of realist painter Andrew Wyeth and grandson of illustrator N.C. Wyeth, had his first one-man exhibition at Knoedler Gallery in 1976 at the age of 20. 

During his friendship with Warhol, the two shopped for antiques and taxidermy specimens together, attended art exhibition and gallery openings, discussed popular culture, and exchanged ideas.  Warhol repeatedly visited Wyeth’s farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.  Warhol’s published diaries chronicle one of these visits.

Warhol and Wyeth painted each other’s portraits.  One journalist referred to a 1976 exhibition of the portraits at the Coe Kerr Gallery in New York City as “The Patriarch of Pop Paints the Prince of Realism.”  In addition, they collaborated on a painting of a large pig for a Washington, DC, charity event. Jamie Wyeth continues to create works saluting his adventures with Warhol.  Wyeth’s The Wind (1999) is a modern interpretation of a post-Pre-Raphaelite painting owned by Warhol.  Factory Lunch (2004) depicts Warhol at the Factory, and Fred Hughes (2005) captures Warhol with his ever-present tape recorder and his business manager.

Basquiat, the son of Puerto Rican and Haitian parents, had fascinated the New York art world since 1977 with his aggressive graffiti slogans.  He had his first one-man show in Italy in 1981, also at the age of 20.  Basquiat was a fiercely ambitious teenager who sought out Warhol, not so much to learn about painting, but to learn how to become a celebrity.  According to art historian Robert Rosenblum, Basquiat was “a dark-skinned crazy kid from Brooklyn who…began his meteoric career by raucously embracing a counter-cultural life, living in public parks, selling painted T-shirts on the street, spraying graffiti on city walls, succumbing to cocaine and heroin, and using a garbage-can lid as his painter’s palette.”  Warhol and Basquiat, like Warhol and Wyeth, painted each other’s portraits and collaborated on a series of paintings that were exhibited in 1985.  Basquiat tried Warhol’s silk-screen techniques, and Warhol created an “oxidation” (copper metal powder, Liquitex acrylics, and urine) portrait of Basquiat.  Basquiat has been credited with inspiring Warhol to return to painting with brush on canvas.  Basquiat died of a drug overdose a year after Warhol’s unexpected death in 1987.

Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth and Basquiat features works by Jamie Wyeth and Basquiat that solidified their individual reputations.  It exhibits works by Warhol related to his collaborations with the younger artists.  The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, photographs, interviews, clippings and audiotapes related to the Warhol-Wyeth and Warhol-Basquiat years.  Additional information and demonstration material focuses on the unusual techniques used by Warhol to create portraits during the 1970s and 1980s.

Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth and Basquiat is organized by the Brandywine River Museum.

The accompanying exhibition catalogue, published by the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, can be purchased at the Brandywine River Museum or online at www.brandywinemuseumshop.org.  The guest curator for the exhibition, Dr. Joyce Hill Stoner, is an art historian, paintings conservator and Director of the Preservation Studies Doctoral Program at the University of Delaware.

Visit the museum’s website at : www.brandywinemuseum.org