The National Gallery of Modern Art-Edinburgh
Andy Warhol
I recently visited the National Gallery of Modern art in Edinburgh and I really enjoyed the visit. It was a gallery full of Andy Warhol’s work through the years; which was very interesting to look at as I studied him Art and Design.
There was a number of rooms dedicated to Warhols work. The first room was dedicated to his early drawings. It was really fascinating to walk around the room and look at all the different drawings; some caught my eye and others didn’t, but to me it was amazing to see where the change started to develop within his work, where simple line drawings started to become bigger more bold drawings, until eventually it became pop art.
This drawing was produced from Ink and Dye on paper. Andy Warhol was known for recycling images and traces to create new designs, this drawing looks as if the women was originally smoking a cigarette. The in-continuous lines in the drawing leaves more for the eye to desire and gives more of an abstract feeling to the over drawing.
This is the same technique as all the drawings in the room; he transfered an image onto the clear white paper and used his famous ‘blotting line’ technique; a very monoprint process. The drawing is all about a young boy in love, balancing his heart on his finger. The origanlly photograph may have been completely different but Warhol always produced something more interesting and specular than what it first could have been.
The work that Warhol was most known for was the Marilyn Manroe pop art. The design was made be screen printing on silk sheets; each print would have been more unique than the last as screen printing is unpredictable. He created this piece after her suicide in 1962. It was interesting to see up close, the real famous pop art I studied in school; you could see each lump and bump that was left by the screen separating from the paper.
In the second room there was a big glass table full of polaroids photographs taken of Andy Warhol.
Around 1970 Andy Warhol loved using the big shot polaroid camera because of the “simplified tonal range between black and white”. I really enjoyed looking at the display because of the flow that it presented; my eye was lead around each photograph which were all correctly spaced in the cabinet. I liked the vintage style that the camera gave to the the photograph. It’s fascinating to see what the photograph quality looked like back then compared to now; and I have to say I think I almost enjoy the vintage looked compared to ours.
I enjoy his style of photograph, black and white and very simple compositions.
I very much enjoyed this exhibition of Andy Warhol’s work, it was captivating to see the work of someone I only knew little about. You could clearly see the changing of his work throughout the exhibit. Room to room it felt like you were stepping into a part of his life, which made the visit even more intriguing.
