Andy Warhol may be in heaven but his art has a hellish darkness

A new Norman Rosenthal-curated exhibition at the Ashmolean is a haunting collection of the artist’s work across a range of techniques and subjects

Looking at Andy Warhol’s painting of a bright pink penis caressed by deep black shadows from his series Torsos/Sex Parts, veteran curator Norman Rosenthal becomes nostalgic. When Rosenthal used to visit Warhol’s studio in the 1980s, he remembers, the artist offered to portray him naked. Sadly, he was not willing to remove his clothes.

Turning from sex parts to the faces that stare from the walls, caught in flashbulb lightning, it hits me that everyone is naked in Warhol’s art. The nudity is not that of the bedroom. It is the nakedness of the grave. Under every bright smear of lipstick lies a skull. In every camera-struck eye is the foreshadow of an empty socket. Or as TS Eliot, who Rosenthal thinks has a lot in common with Warhol, wrote: “Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.”

Continue reading...