ASPEN ART MUSEUM
ANDY WARHOL: LIFETIMES
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TERENCE TROUILLOT ON BROADWAY AND MARSHA P. JOHNSON
avant-garde predilections. However, as Glenn Ligon judiciously points out in his essay ‘Pay It No Mind’—which ap- peared in the catalog for the exhibition ‘Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 2018—these prints ‘are portraits and not-portraits’ at the same time. While they are im- ages of real people, Ligon explains, they essentially lose that signifier through the dynamic use of color and contrast Warhol brought to his iconic silkscreen printing style in this series. The images of these women become something new, something outside of themselves, perhaps something beyond a trans
or queer identity: a process which might be considered, negatively, as flattening or, positively, as transcendence. For me, the series of pictures are both portraits and not-portraits because they immediately feel both per- sonal and impersonal. As Ligon states, Warhol was commissioned to make this series by the art dealer Luciano Anselmino; neither man knew these women well. In the finished works, there is a kind of fabulous undoing and remaking of the auras of these beautiful women: most notably Marsha P. Johnson, one of the fierce leaders of the Stonewall uprising. The preparatory Polaroids—quick snapshots with the sole
purpose of being references for the fin- ished works—to my mind, feel like more candid and intimate representations. In one, a woman by the name of Broadway —sans make-up, finger in mouth, wear- ing a large pearl necklace—gazes coyly at the camera. She exudes confidence. She feels present. She feels seen.
Andy Warhol’s silkscreen series ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ remains something of an outlier in the artist’s lauded career. These works, derived from Polaroids Warhol took of drag queens and trans women of color, who frequented New York’s Gilded Grape—a haunt for queers and queens just off Times Square—offer perhaps an ahead-of-its- time aesthetic towards trans visibility and self-determination (despite their overtly tongue-in-cheek, perhaps lam- entable, title). To some eyes, these colorful works can be easily read as a ferocious indica- tor of political consciousness—one that might seem distinct from Warhol’s
Above Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Broadway) , 1974 Polaroid, 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in. Image and Artwork © 2021 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Opposite Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen (Broadway) , 1975 acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 14 × 11 in. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Terence Trouillot is senior editor of frieze . He lives in New York.
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