Andy Warhol: Portraits of the 70s.

In 1979, for the second time in a decade, the Whitney Museum of American Art had mounted a major exhibition devoted to the work of Andy Warhol. Warhol’s work this time markedly contrasted with his iconic creations of the 1960s: “There [was] this major difference: whereas the earlier work was very neat and precise in execution (the Brillo box had, after all, to look like a Brillo box), the new work [had] a very slapdash look. This, as they say, [was] no accident. In the 60's it was important for artists of the Pop school not to appear to have any affinity with Abstract Expressionism, but in the 70's — such [were] the vicissitudes of taste—it was O.K. again for paintings to look smeary and ‘unfinished’...” (New York Times). “With Warhol’s gallery of contemporary faces, the decade of 1970s high society is instantly captured. In this glittering realm, light and shadow are bleached out by the high wattage of spotlights; colors seem selected from the likes of Baskin-Robbins; and brushstrokes offer an extravagant, upper-income virtuosity which appears to be quoting, for conspicuous consumption, a bravura tradition that extends from Hals through de Kooning” (Robert Rosenblum).