California Art Museum Calendar: Andy Warhol at SFMOMA through September 2, 2019

Andy Warhol From A to B And Back Again at SFMOMA

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) had a strong connection to California: it was in Los Angeles at La Cienega Boulevard’s Ferus Gallery that Warhol had his first solo show in 1962, the 32 painting series, Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans.

Warhol’s art has returned to California, the major retrospective Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again(organized by New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art) now occupies the fourth floor and several other galleries at the expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).  The exhibition spans Warhol’s lifetime of art making from his humble early roots as an ad illustrator to his now classic pop art phase to repetitive silkscreen portraits of celebrities to his large-scale oil paintings, made close to his untimely death.

Exhibition entrance at SFMOMA

While Warhol’s pop art Brillo boxes and Campbell soup cans may seem ubiquitous and his silk screen style often copied, the exhibition goes beyond his iconic images. Abstractions, skulls, his rarely seen body parts series and a1972 painted wall-sized portrait of Chairman Mao are special revelations. Warhol cannot be understood without his studio, know as the Factory. A short film chronicles Warhol at work with one assistant silk screening Silver Marlon, a portrait of Marlon Brando (taken from The Wild One film publicity still); in later years, he worked with dozens of assistants and few of the pieces presented are signed.

Exit through the Andy Warhol themed gift shop

 Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again will be at SFMOMA through Sept. 2, 2019. 

Road trip: San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences

We're on a rooftop in the picture above, though it looks like a Sci-Fi movie set. It's a living roof-- covered in wildflowers and skylights. Spent an afternoon at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and if you remember the former building, all dark, depressing and crowded inside, then the new structure will be quite the revelation. I compare the building to Los Angeles' very own BCAM, also by architect Renzo Piano, in this month's LF Ledger.

If you've ever had to accompany young children to a natural history or science museum, you'll totally appreciate the innovations (natural light!) and the inspiring bio-sphere like structure (below) that houses the Rain Forests of the World exhibit where butterflies and birds fly free.