Andy Warhol. Velvet Rage and Beauty

About

Andy Warhol is one of the best-known and most discussed artists of the 20th century. While his works of consumer goods and famous people were widely distributed, a theme that had been present since the late 1940s and up until his early death in 1987 received little attention: Warhol's continuous search for an image for his (mostly male) ideal of beauty and desire. The Neue Nationalgalerie is now compiling a major overview for the first time, focusing thematically on this central aspect in Warhol's various creative phases. With more than 300 works, paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, Polaroids, films and collages, the exhibition in the upper hall enables a comprehensive and inclusive understanding of the artist Andy Warhol, who never had a real "coming out" during his lifetime. 

From Warhol's early drawings to the screen tests and films of the 1960s, the torso paintings of the 1970s, his artistic collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat in the 1980s, and countless photographs, he explores in a challenging way physical beauty and weaknesses, fragility and strength, as well as his own diversity and fluidity in the form of many self-portraits. During his lifetime, his explicit depictions of the body were sometimes considered immoral, perverse, or even pornographic and illegal. As a result, many of these works received little visibility in the art world and never became known to a wider public.

In addition to the “Double Elvis” (1963) from the National Gallery, Marx Collection, special international loans come from: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mugrabi Collection, NYC, mumok – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, as well as a large number from the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.

The title of the exhibition "Andy Warhol: Velvet Rage and Beauty" is a tribute to the book The Velvet Rage (2005), in which the author Alan Downs describes the feeling of growing up and living as a gay man in a heterosexually dominated world. Warhol died in 1987 at the age of just 58. He left behind a complex body of work that influenced subsequent generations of artists, but during his lifetime he never experienced the open acceptance to devote himself to this specific aspect of his work. While this queerness seems to be under threat again in many societies today, the exhibition in Berlin in 2024 takes the opportunity to bring together these expressive works for the first and hopefully not the last time.

Note: The exhibition shows very explicit nudity and sexuality as well as diverse representations of gender and bodies. If you would like to visit the exhibition with children or young people, do so together and keep talking.