The exhibition highlighted the way in which Andy Warhol (Pittsburgh, 1928 – New York, 1987) captures the cult of merchandise that emerged from the industrial inventions of the 19th century. Always attentive to technical and industrial progress, Warhol used all kinds of techniques and machines, from screen printing to the video recorder, with production patterns that he himself defined as “typical of an assembly line”.
This seemingly impersonal mechanical art cynically denies any intended spiritual charge. Warhol’s nihilistic silence is, in fact, one of the factors that give his work poetic height. Along with a selection of essays written by theorists of his work, the exhibition includes a section of portraits of the artist, taken by photographers such as Alberto Schommer, Richard Avedon and Robert Mapplethorpe.
