In Bologna, nostalgia for those eighties that saw the killing of John Lennon, the election of Ronald Regan, the success of Madonna and high-waisted trousers, brings on display Andy Warhol and his colleagues.
The exhibition is called Warhol&Friends. NYC 80s and until 24 February 2019, it will keep Emilians and tourists company who at Palazzo Albergati will be able to admire 150 of the works that tell Warhol, his life and his production.
Between stories of excesses, transgression and worldliness, the Eighties represented the unrepeatable ferment of a combination of art, music, cinema and literature which today bring to Bologna Warhol, Haring with Untitled, Schnabel with Dunciad (Trances of Bouboul), Koons with Art Magazine Ads, Basquiat with Untitled and Bertoglio with Grace Jones and Madonna, to name a few.
Read too often as the decade of disenchantment and superficiality, the 80s have their own way of doing politics in an explosion of colors and figures where art is not just a visual experience.
Among the protagonists of the music, photography and cinema scene are Edo Bertoglio from Ticino, photographer and author of the documentary film Downtown 81 interpreted by Basquiat, the French artist Maripol who creates theartwork for the album Like a Virgin of Madonna, Nan Goldin with her stories of daily life. Neo-expressionist painting makes its way into the great galleries of SoHo and relates to the experiences of the Italian Transavantgarde with Francesco Clemente and Sandro Chia. Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Robert Longo form the superstar triad of American painting, which in the 90s also competed in cinema.
On display with 36 works and 38 Polaroids Andy Warhol right at the beginning of the 80s returns to the center of the artistic and social life of New York creating some of his most interesting cycles present in the exhibition such as Shoes, Hammer & Sickle, Camouflage, Lenin , Joseph Beuys, Vesuvius, Knives.
Between advertising, commerce, consumer goods - from Duty Free to Levi's Jeans - the new Warhol opens up even more to the world of communication and the media, thus approaching the new generation of young artists of the 80s who saw in him a forerunner, a real guru.
By transforming the fetishes of the American collective imagination into art and anticipating the establishment of the power of the mass media, Warhol made the characters of the star system and the symbols of consumerism icons: Liza Minelli, Marilyn Monroe and Mao alongside Campbell's Soup, Brillo Boxes and the Dollar, all on display in Bologna.
With the sponsorship of the Emilia Romagna Region and the Municipality of Bologna, the exhibition Warhol&Friends. New York in the 80s is produced and organized by the Arthemisia Group and curated by Luca Beatrice.
