warhol's jews

i went to the jewish museum today and saw a fun exhibit called warhol's ten portraits of jews of the twentieth century. this exhibit was fun to see in person, but im not sure that it would be as good if i had seen it in a book about the exhibit.


warhol drew ten portraits of who he considered to be important jewish people of the twentieth century. the catch is that he never met most of them and those who he painted were dead when the original exhibit in 1980 was created. he painted their likeness from photos.


gertude stein, golda meyer, sarah bernhardt, george gershwin, franz kafka , three of the marx brothers, sigmund freud, martin buber, louis brandeis, and albert einstein were immortalized in these paintings. the original photos were included in the exhibit as well. my favorite painting was that of golda meir. he really captured the spirit in her eyes, so much so that even not having actually met her it felt like i had. it was eerie.


the painting of kafka was also quite exceptional.


while i was viewing the exhibit, i was treated to one of the elderly docents giving a tour of the exhibit. it gave the exhibit a true new york jewish flavor. the other nice part of having the docent's tour was that she took everyone up to the third floor to view the jewish painters who had incorporated warholesque techniques in their works.


included in the artists who metamorphosed warhols techniques were those of ben shahn, deborah kass, and alex katz. ben shahn's paintings of photos of the civil rights freedom fighters who were killed were uncanny. deborah kass did a warhol version of elizabeth taylor and barbara streisand. warhol himself refused to do a portrait of barbara streisand.

i would recommend this exhibit. its an enjoyable look at the past. no one is even quite sure why warhol really wanted to do these paintings since he was catholic, which to me adds to the allure.