February 4 - May 15, 2022
Andy Warhol's Little Red Book
Andy Warhol (1928–87), a leading figure in the 1960s pop art movement, is best known today for his brightly colored silkscreen paintings of celebrities and soup cans. His work challenged preconceived notions about fine art, and in doing so blurred the lines between art and popular culture. In addition to his well-known paintings, Warhol produced a large body of photographic work–specifically, Polaroid snapshots.
Throughout the 1970s, Warhol documented his life using a Polaroid camera, taking spontaneous photographs of friends, celebrities, and associates. He also used Polaroid images as source material for his commissioned portraits, as the bright exposure of the Polaroid translated well into his signature high contrast style. Warhol produced more than 40,000 Polaroids between 1970 and 1987, a small portion of which he meticulously arranged into over 100 small red Holson Polaroid albums–the namesake for his Little Red Books.
This exhibition includes all twenty Polaroids from Warhol's Little Red Book #114, which were taken in July and August of 1972. The photographs, likely taken while Warhol was entertaining friends at his summer retreat in Montauk, include candid portraits of members of Warhol’s social circle such as model and food writer Maxime de la Falaise, model and actress Amina Warsuma, actress Betsy von Furstenberg, and Claude Picasso, among others. The decidedly unglamorous snapshots of everyday life contained in the Little Red Books demonstrate Warhol’s compulsive desire to capture, collect, and organize his world.
Exhibition Programs
Artist
Curators
Artist + Curator
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol changed the way we look at the world, and the way the world looks at art. With his exhaustive observation of cultural trends, from his rise to Pop art fame in the early 1960s up until his death in 1987, he identified the images and aesthetics shaping the consumer-driven postwar American experience, and transformed what he saw into a sophisticated yet accessible body of work. He invented new ways of image making, vastly expanding what was considered fine art, and also a new kind of artist, one who merged art and life, and treated painting, photography, filmmaking, writing, publishing, advertising, branding, performance, video, television, digital media—and even his own persona—as equally valid terrain for creative experimentation. Often lost in his own celebrity and myth is the fact that he is widely considered one of the most important postwar artists of the 20th century.
Artist
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol changed the way we look at the world, and the way the world looks at art. With his exhaustive observation of cultural trends, from his rise to Pop art fame in the early 1960s up until his death in 1987, he identified the images and aesthetics shaping the consumer-driven postwar American experience, and transformed what he saw into a sophisticated yet accessible body of work. He invented new ways of image making, vastly expanding what was considered fine art, and also a new kind of artist, one who merged art and life, and treated painting, photography, filmmaking, writing, publishing, advertising, branding, performance, video, television, digital media—and even his own persona—as equally valid terrain for creative experimentation. Often lost in his own celebrity and myth is the fact that he is widely considered one of the most important postwar artists of the 20th century.
Dr. Patricia Daigle
Patricia Lee Daigle is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. She previously served as Director of The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at the University of Memphis and Curatorial Assistant in Contemporary Art at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Daigle received her Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Dr. Patricia Daigle
Patricia Lee Daigle is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. She previously served as Director of The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at the University of Memphis and Curatorial Assistant in Contemporary Art at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Daigle received her Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Program Recordings
Resources
The 901 Black American Portraits Soundtrack
Listen to a soundtrack of Memphis music that exemplifies Black Love, Power, and Joy. The 901 Black American Portraits Soundtrack celebrates the vibrant legacy and future of Black musicians in the city of Memphis. This playlist was curated by Jared “Jay B” Boyd, a Memphis-based multimedia artist, journalist, DJ, and on-air personality.
MCA Exhibition Questionnaire
Help us generate the fullest picture possible of the MCA experience.
Submitting a questionnaire, which includes a request for an image of an artwork, is essential to be considered for part of the exhibition.
Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?
The American art theorist Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) posed this question as the title of a pioneering article in 1971. This essay was considered one of the first major works of Feminist art history, it has become a set text for those who study art internationally, and it is influential in many other fields.