Montclair Art Museum Presents "Warhol and Cars: American Icons" On view March 6 - June 19

Feb. 4, 2011 - PRLog -- "I think of myself as an American artist; I like it here. I think it’s so great. I feel I represent the U.S. in my art but I’m not a social critic: I just paint those objects in my paintings because those are the things I know best…. I’ve heard it said that my paintings are as much a part of the fashionable world as clothes and cars."

Andy Warhol, 1966

As one of the most iconic and influential artists of the 20th century, Andy Warhol has helped to define America. His signature images of such American products and celebrities as Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor have become instantly recognizable, while challenging traditional and cherished distinctions: between fine and commercial art, the mechanical and hand made, popular taste and high culture, repetition and singularity. In doing so, Warhol himself has attained a level of celebrity and public visibility unknown to most artists.

Yet despite the intense attention paid to Warhol since the time of his death, in 1987, his preoccupation with another American icon, the automobile, has been largely overlooked. The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) now breaks new ground in presenting "Warhol and Cars: American Icons," the first exhibition to examine Warhol’s enduring fascination with automotive
vehicles as products of American consumer society. Highlighting MAM’s pivotal, little known,
early silkscreen painting, Twelve Cadillacs, 1962, "Warhol and Cars" features more than 40 drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, and related archival documents on loan from the Andy Warhol Museum and private collections spanning Warhol’s career from 1946 to 1986. The exhibition will be shown exclusively at the Montclair Art Museum, on view from March 6 through June 19, 2011.

The exhibition is organized chronologically and thematically, tracing the development of Warhol’s work with cars throughout his career. Exhibition highlights include a rare, spontaneous drawing of the 1940s featuring a produce truck operated by Warhol’s brother Paul; works on paper of the 1950s, dating from the era of Warhol’s commercial magazine illustration; and paintings and prints from his important and poignant Car Crash series.

A key work is Twelve Cadillacs, part of a group of nine Warhol car paintings published in the November 1962 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, which commissioned Warhol to make a visual commentary on the phenomenon of the iconic American motor car. The repetition and grid organization became a central feature of Warhol’s work. For the first time, Twelve Cadillacs will be juxtaposed with potential source images, as well as the related Seven Cadillacs and the hand-painted Lincoln Continental, both of which were also part of the Harper’s Bazaar commission. Also on view will be a related drawing and car model of Cadillacs from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection of American Automobile Art.

Warhol’s continued engagement with the theme of the automobile is seen in prints and paintings of the 1970s and 1980s based on Volkswagen advertisements, as well as in multiple photographs of European and American cars sewn together with thread into a format evocative of Warhol’s characteristic assembly-line aesthetic.

Also featured will be a film of the artist painting a BMW in 1979 as part of the BMW Art Race Car Projects introduced by French race car driver Hervé Poulain. A painted miniature model of this car will be among a number of rare archival documents. It will be complemented by a unique, recently discovered, large-scale fiberglass maquette of a 1978 BMW art race car incorporating Warhol’s Pop art floral design, exhibited in the United States for the first time.

"Warhol and Cars: American Icons" is organized by the Montclair Art Museum and curated by Gail Stavitsky, MAM chief curator.

Exhibition Catalogue
Published by the Montclair Art Museum, Warhol and Cars: American Icons, by Gail Stavitsky, is the first to focus on Warhol’s Cadillacs paintings and other car-themed works within the context of his career and American art prior to and during his lifetime. Fully illustrated. 88 pages. Softcover. Available at the Museum Store.  

Related Exhibition
A related installation of Andy Warhol’s "Silver Clouds" will be on display on loan from the Warhol Museum. Exhibited in 1966, Warhol referred to these silver mylar pillows, filled with a mixture of helium and air, as “a painting that floats.… some floating sculpture … silver rectangles that I blow up and that float … free.” Their silver color was a favorite of his, which he associated with the Factory and the band the Velvet Underground, “who will belong to the biggest discotheque in the world, where painting and music and sculpture can be combined and that’s what I’m doing now.” "Silver Clouds" will be displayed in a separate room, painted black to evoke the experience of the 1968 presentation of the modern dance Rainforest, choreographed by Merce Cunningham, with music by John Cage, costumes by Jasper Johns, and set design by Warhol. A DVD of the 1968 film of this dance, by DA Pennybacker and Richard Leacock, will be displayed on a monitor adjacent to this room, for a “Happening”-like experience.

Public Programs; Group Tours
MAM is offering a wide variety of education and public programs for all ages in connection with the exhibition. Please consult the calendar on the home page of montclairartmuseum.org for complete information. Group tours may be booked by calling 973-259-5136 or by e-mailing tours@montclairartmuseum.org.

Online Press Site
The Museum will maintain a site dedicated to the exhibition for journalists seeking further information, including a checklist and images. Please visit montclairartmuseum.org and click on For the Media.

Visit Montclair
For more Montclair experiences, visit websites for the Montclair Center Business Improvement District (www.montclaircenter.com/) and Destination Montclair (www.destinationmontclair.com).

Sponsorship
Warhol and Cars: American Icons is made possible by generous support from The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Mandee, Annie sez, and the Judith Targan Endowment Fund for Museum Publications.  Additional support has been provided by Exhibition Angels: the Vance Wall Foundation, The Susan V Bershad Charitable Fund, Bobbi Brown and Steven Plofker, Bob and Bobbie Constable, Tracy Higgins and James Leitner, Jacqueline and Herb Klein, Lyn and Glenn Reiter, Toni LeQuire-Schott and Newton B. Schott, Jr., Adrian A. Shelby, Margo and Frank Walter, and Joan and Donald Zief.

This exhibition was selected by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as part of the American Masterpieces Series in New Jersey. American Masterpieces is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

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The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) presents exhibitions and programs that reflect its collection of historic and contemporary American and Native American art. MAM's Yard School of Art offers classes for people of all ages.