Works Exhibited
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Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce a major exhibition of Andy Warhol's Camouflage Paintings of 1986. One of the last serial groups of paintings Warhol completed before his death in 1987, these paintings are inspired by the military motif of camouflage.
The Camouflage Paintings confront issues of pattern and design within the context of the New York School of Abstraction. Using an image which is itself a simplification of nature, Warhol addresses the history of landscape painting. As Thomas Kellein puts this irony in historical perspective for the introduction to his seminal exhibition "Warhol Abstracts":
With the Camouflages, a military pattern that helped hide weapons of war in the landscape was brought into play for an abstract, informal flood of paintings. Warhol expanded the vegetable like effect of leaf-shaped sprigs and islands, first onto square, then onto rectangular formats, until the "all over" ideal of the Abstract Expressionists had been brought back to its familiar origin: the water lily paintings of Claude Monet. This historically burdened design was brightened and lightened by colors to such an extent that we stand in front of some spiritually emphatic testimony to abstract painting, ready to lose ourselves in the Camouflages as in a landscape.
In conjunction with this exhibition, Gagosian Gallery will sponsor a seminar devoted to the presentation of papers on the late period of Warhol's oeuvre. Scheduled for December, specifics and location of this event will be announced at a later date. A fully illustrated catalogue will also accompany the exhibition.
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