I want a Warhol for my birthday....

And that's exactly what I'll get - many of them in fact. Well, not just me, but everyone who visits Ferens Art Gallery on 2 June, which is my birthday! That's when 'Andy Warhol: Artist Rooms' opens (until 13 January 2013). I visited the current Warhol exhibition at The Graves Gallery in Sheffield recently, which had some of the self portraits also shown at The Lowry in Manchester's exhibition ('Warhol and the Diva'), which I visited and wrote about last year for 'Mr Hockney In Hull'. As the Ferens prepares to go Pop, I thought it would be an ideal time to revisit it. It's interesting to think how back then I didn't know the Ferens would be welcoming Warhol, and the thought of Warhol and Hockney's work both on display in the gallery is truly exciting.




"Art is what you can get away with" - Andy Warhol

After walking around rooms of Lowry's mill scenes and seascapes, it's quite a shock to suddenly find myself surrounded by Hollywood glamour. But then Warhol himself, having grown up poor in a mining town, knew only too well the impact of divas such as Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor in bringing that glamour to the everyday. 

On the surface (where Warhol appeared happiest), there is little in this show that's new. Warhol was interested in celebrating the banality of the everyday. What this exhibition does do is explore Warhol's own fascination with the women he made into art. There are startling photos and film footage of him in women's clothes, wig and make-up, appearing to emulate Marilyn Monroe. In a room painted gold and hot pink, filled with Warhol's Marilyns and a chandelier reflecting in the glass, it's a pretty powerful impression. 

There are also photographs of Warhol with many of his artistic subjects, such as Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Harry. What is striking is how comfortable they look in his presence, regarding him as a fellow star, while he retains the awkward pose of the impoverished starstruck kid, always the detached outsider.

Given David Hockney's association with Warhol, I was interested in what common ground their art appears to share. In a New York Times article ('David Hockney's Long road Home') by Carol Kino (October 15, 2009), Chrissie Iles, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art is quoted as saying "(Hockney) took the very English preoccupation with portraiture and turned it upside down by eroticizing it". Warhol arguably does something similar but in a very American way. There's also the bright colours of Warhol's divas and Hockney's pool paintings, and the fascination with famous, glamorous people in society. But while Hockney developed friendships with many of his subjects, or depicted those he already knew, Warhol always retained a starstruck distance.

One of the most interesting things about this exhibition is how it displays the original Polaroids of many of Warhol's original subjects (although, significantly, he never met Monroe - the ultimate unattainable star), letting you see how his portraits compare. Seeing Liza Minnelli and Debbie Harry as their natural, yet obviously glamorous selves, then as exaggerated colour-saturated works of art was fascinating.

Watching 'This Green and Pleasant Land', a BBC4 documentary about the history of landscape painting reminded me of David Hockney's fascination with new technology. The programme discussed his use of the iPad in creating art, which he regularly sends to his friends (lucky friends), and whether this is a revolutionary way of making art, or if it threatens to destroy it, by removing the idea of the original. You can only imagine what Warhol himself would also be doing with the technology we have today, if he were still alive.