ASPEN ART MUSEUM
DEC 03 2021 – MAR 27 2022
19
Warhol in Private SEEING Opposite Monica Majoli in her studio, Los Angeles, October 2021 All photographs: © Ye Rin Mok Following its premiere at Tate Modern in London, and versions in Cologne and Toronto, for this iteration of the Warhol exhibition the Aspen Art Museum invited artist Monica Majoli to reconceptualize its staging, utilizing personal artefacts and archival materials alongside artworks. In conversation with Simone Krug, Majoli explains her queer a ! nity for archives and her aim to reveal Warhol ‘as a concept and as a person’.
The deep dialogue that some artists engage in with other artists and their work is an understudied subject, and one that is important to me. Warhol is at once familiar and mysterious, so it was key for me to invite artist Monica Majoli to think about how to look at his work and life anew: to imbue this artist we think we know so well with a di ! erent kind of life. —Nicola Lees SIMONE KRUG ‘Andy Warhol: Lifetimes’ looks at Warhol’s life as a parallel to his work. So, I wanted to start by speaking about intimacy and the relationship that you’ve developed through the research stages of putting this exhi- bition together. We’ve talked about how his images are so familiar and so iconic that they’ve become distanced within a canon and yet, at the same time, Warhol is so present. MONICA MAJOLI I’ve always admired Warhol. I think of some of his work regularly—the early works from the 1960s, his early portraits of Jackie [Kennedy Onassis], etc. The ‘Death and Disaster’ series, which he began in 1963, was important for me because of its extremity. Also, the way it dealt with temporality and touch, and the mediated image. I discovered things about Warhol through the years, but I never did a deep dive into his life. I didn’t have precon- ceptions about who he was. I’d had a more abstract idea of him, through images of him, and I’ve always been much more focused on his work. I don’t recall ever having closely read his diaries before. Emphasizing archival materials seems like a way to make his life palpa- ble in a di ! erent way, so that it’s not all about the work that we know so well, but it’s about these materials around it that can make the work feel new again and connect to him, as an artist, but also as a person. SK We’ve done an immense amount of research through this process. What was surprising to you? MM The complexity of Warhol’s person- ality. You wonder how he reconciled certain things like being a devout Catholic with his relationship to sex—voyeurism, his homosexuality. When I read about him, part of what was surprising to me was how vulnerable, insecure and endearing he was. There was a sweetness to him; he was a romantic. There are interesting ways that Warhol operated and what I’m " nding compelling is how that doubles back or re # ects, somehow, his personality or his life story. It’s like a puzzle. There were so many di ! erent periods of his life and work and a multifaceted quality to his practice. But then there are also through-lines, and his personality is re- # ected in these di ! erent modes of making. SK To take a step backward: it’s such a curious gesture to ask an artist to re ! ect on Warhol—someone who changed American culture in major ways—and for them to reimagine the life and work of someone so iconic. This show comes to Aspen after a European and a Canadian run, and I wanted to know what changes or reconceptualizations felt necessary in presenting the show in the US? And what new perspectives were interesting to foreground for you as an American artist? MM I think there’s a general under- standing or comprehension of Warhol here in America. I’m assuming a
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