Interview with Norman Rosenthal re Andy Warhol: Works from the Hall Collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

11/02/16

Interview with Norman Rosenthal

Andy Warhol: Works from the Hall Collection
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
4 February – 15 May 2016

With a figure as well known as Andy Warhol (1928-87), whose works are so instantly recognisable, it might seem an impossible task to put on an exhibition and keep it fresh and interesting for the public. The current exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, however, which features more than 100 previously unseen works, spanning the whole of Warhol’s career, contains many surprises. Curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal, from the collection of Andrew and Christine Hall, it – in the words of the Ashmolean’s director, Xa Sturgis – more than “puts paid to the idea of Warhol as a spent force in the 70s and 80s”.

In stark contrast to the stunning, high-reaching wall in the central gallery, hung with Warhol’s more recognisable commissioned screen prints of celebrities (including Joseph Beuys, Paul Anka and Maria Shriver), the final room focuses on his last year of life, showing only black-and-white prints, many with religious and existential themes. Another section features drawings, proving that Warhol was a talented draughtsman: “He had a natural line, which was every bit as beautiful as Matisse,” says Rosenthal, for whom these late drawings were a “revelation”. Highlights of the first room include a group of artists’ portraits and a series of prints of Watson Powell, a successful but unknown businessman, who came to be known as “the American Man”. Alongside this, a small side room acts as a screening room, showing looped excerpts from Empire (1964) and Sleep (1963) alongside Eat (1963), Kiss (1963) and Screen Tests (1964-65). Every corner of space has been used and the exhibition feels representative without being crowded.

“Andy took the world as it was and, in his own way, described it with amazing accuracy,” says Rosenthal, who talks about trying “to tell a story through the pack of cards that is the [Hall] collection”. Studio International spoke to him at the opening of the exhibition.

Watch the interview here

Review of Art into Society – Society into Art: Seven German Artists at the ICA

09/02/16
Art into Society – Society into Art: Seven German Artists
ICA Fox Reading Room, London
19 January – 6 March 2016


Can art bring about reform? Maybe even revolution? How might it be used as a politically motivated tool? These questions were at the forefront of seven key German artists’ minds in the early 1970s, and an exhibition of their work, held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1974, opened them out to a wider international audience.

In its series of archival exhibitions, displayed in the Fox Reading Room, the ICA has currently mounted a grand review of the exhibition Art into Society – Society into Art: Seven German Artists, which took place from 29 October – 24 November 1974 and was organised by the then ICA curator, Norman Rosenthal, and the writer and curator Christos M Joachimides. The research and display have been jointly – and thoroughly – pulled together by Lucy Bayley and Juliette Desorgues. On show are photographs of the installation and surrounding events; vitrines with the catalogue and printed material relating to the exhibition; photocopied press coverage from the time; and select audio and video material, including extracts from a general discussion on politics in Germany that took place at the ICA on 19 November 1974.


Read the review here

Review of Reflections on the Self: From Dürer to Struth at Christie’s Mayfair

10/06/15

Reflections on the Self: From Dürer to Struth

Christie’s Mayfair, London

2 June – 5 September 2015

Artists since time immemorial have painted self-portraits: at times because models’ fees were beyond their meagre means; at times because they found themselves in isolation; at times simply because no one knows anyone as well as he knows himself and such intimate knowledge permits exploration and honesty, the freedom to experiment, and fulfils the desire to express.

For its sixth exhibition, Christie’s Mayfair, the auction house’s dedicated exhibition space, brings together more than 50 artists and 70 works showing the diversity of media, formats and styles used by artists to reflect their selves, from Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) to Thomas Struth (b1954). A rare 15th-century woodcut by the former, The Bathhouse (c1496-97), depicts the artist leaning on a wooden support, a tap comically positioned where his genitals should be, wistfully watching the other men as they bathe. A photograph by Struth, Alte Pinakothek, Self-Portrait Munich (2000), from his Museum Portraits series, looks over the artist’s shoulder at the well-known later self-portrait by Dürer (1500). The exhibition as a whole is framed by this one work.

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/reflections-on-the-self-from-duerer-to-struth-christies-london