Warhol
Andy Warhol pays tribute to Joseph Beuys in this face-to-face dialogue between two giants of the second half of the 20thcentury: Warhol himself, paragon of New York glam, and Beuys, the eclectic, inspired social activist. Warhol plays with the German artist’s face, framed by hissignature porkpie hat, as he had done in the past with Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, Elvis Presley and many other famous personalities, as well as with cans of Campbell’s soup, bottles of Coca Cola, electric chairs, and news photos of traffic accidents and other calamities. In Warhol’s work, Hollywood starsand the jet set are treated as objects of consumption, as images that evoke scenarios of death. With the captivating language of Pop Art, Warhol seems to want to portray, without judgment, a society that dilutes and devours everything through works that intertwine life and death, in a complexity of perspectives that reflect the existential struggles of a public figure whose private identitywas very different from the fashionablesuperficiality that is often attributed to him.