Andy Warhol: Velvet Rage and Beauty

Andy Warhol’s continuous pursuit of ideal beauty—visible in a body of his work that is brought here together for the first time.

Andy Warhol is arguably one of the most widely known and discussed artists of the twentieth century. While his depictions of consumer products and celebrities led him to become household famous, there is a red thread throughout his career, starting even in the late forties until his untimely death in 1987. In the eighties Warhol was continuously searching to visualize an ideal of beauty, male beauty, finding form and creating lasting images of what he desired. He visualized and therefore eternalized this continuous pursuit of ideal beauty.
From the early line and blotted line drawings to his screen tests and moving image experiments in the sixties, the torso paintings in the seventies through his collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat, there is a continuous search to express an ideal of male beauty. During his lifetime these works were either considered inappropriate, immoral, deviant or even pornographic and therefore illegal. Many of these works never received the public exposure and recognition that they deserve. Neue Nationalgalerie is for the first time putting together a large survey focusing on this thematic and central aspect throughout Warhol’s different production phases and stages of career. This publication offers an insight into a Warhol, that during his lifetime never had a real “coming-out”.
Warhol died in 1987 at the age of only 58. He left behind an incredibly complex and influential body of work, which during his lifetime never experienced the open acceptance that we now have to look at these specific bodies of work.

KLAUS BIESENBACH is the director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.