Andy Warhol will be getting more than his share of 15 minutes of fame in the Newcomb Hall Artspace Gallery. Like many of the artists featured in "Looking at the '70s: The For Meyer Schapiro Portfolio," Warhol offers a glimpse at the influential art movements that took place in the 1970s.
Although Warhol probably is the most well-known artist featured in the exhibit, other popular artists such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella and Claes Oldenburg display artwork that crossed boundaries and affected perceptions of art's role in popular culture.
Twelve contemporaries and friends of Meyer Schapiro, a respected art historian and critic, commissioned the print portfolio in 1974. Schapiro, an artist himself, gained fame through his ability to teach art history in an innovative way.
Annie Herdrich, University Union Artspace chairwoman and fourth-year College student, said Artspace chose the exhibit because it is connected to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She also said the exhibit would be good for the University because it could help "students to see recognizable names and associate them with the Artspace gallery."
With its 12 prints, lithographs and silkscreens, the exhibit focuses on movements such as Abstract expressionism, minimalism and pop art. Although the exhibit does not completely encompass the wide array of art forms prevalent during the 1970s, it effectively reveals the attitudes and philosophies toward the art of the time.
One common theme in the exhibit is the idea of the artistic ordinary object. Pop artists such as Oldenburg and Lichtenstein take common objects and put them in a different light. Lichtenstein uses cartoon-like drawings to portray simple images from everyday life. Unlike his most famous works that display comical scenes of human interaction, Lichtenstein presents a believable still-life image behind his trademark comic strip surface. He places ordinary objects such as a glass of water and a lemon together in the foreground while a newspaper-like group of diagonal black and white lines serves as background. The bright yellow lemon provides the only source of color and works together with shading to present an almost satirical play on traditional artwork.
In Oldenburg's "Three Hats," three brown cartoon hats are arranged in a windswept composition that personifies a rather common object from everyday life. The orange background, with its quick and erratic brush strokes adds, a complementary touch to the autumn-like feel of the image.
Other common objects appear in Warhol's silkscreen "Untitled 12" in a collection of superimposed images. The ever-popular and ubiquitous Campbell's soup can - as well as other nostalgic brand name artifacts of pop culture - takes the form of a layered collage. One must take a closer look at the piece to realize that instead of a black canvas, it is actually a medley of images barely recognizable as classic Warhol.
In his embossed lithograph "Green Curve with Radius of 20 Feet," Ellsworth Kelly shows his audience a simple image of two triangular halves of a rectangle. Stella offers a similar example of minimalist art with a rectangular theme concentrating on optical illusion.
This conflict between abstract expressionism and pop art helps illustrate the art world during the '70s. The exhibit will be on display through Sept. 30.
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