The New York City art scene. An Andy Warhol Exhibit opens at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in May 2019
Wall Street Journal 4.23.2019
Following a massive retrospective at the Whitney, Dominique LĂ©vy and Brett Gorvy have organized the show âWarhol Womenâ at their Upper East Side gallery, opening April 25
Dominique LĂ©vy went to From A to B and Back Again, the Whitney Museum of American Artâs Andy Warhol retrospective, at least ten times when it was on earlier this year. âYou [went] tired, anxious or on a bad day, and you came out with an energy thatâs almost vibrating,â says LĂ©vy, the co-founder of LĂ©vy Gorvy gallery. She and her co-founder Brett Gorvy think the Whitney show has opened a door to zoom in even more closely on Warhol. On April 25, their show Warhol Women opens at the galleryâs Upper East Side space, exploring the artistâs relationship to women, femininity and beauty through his silkscreen portraits from the early 1960s through the â80s.
Gorvy and LĂ©vy think the show will energize collectorsâthe Warhol market moves in waves, Gorvy says, and the Whitney show created the ânext big one.â Theyâre also excited to bring in the broader public and the many artists who have been influenced by Warhol. âHe has this capacity of being the father figure to pretty much all the younger artists that are working today,â says Gorvy. âHim representing women as a male artist is a very interesting idea. This is someone who thought he was ugly as hell and changed his whole image to hide [that]. He identified with femininity.â
Gorvy and LĂ©vy have arranged the show so that the first works viewers see are portraits of Jackie Onassis and Marilyn Monroe, facing one another. LĂ©vy, who came up with the showâs concept, says that no other man has been able to look at women the way Warhol did. âWithout sexualizing the subject, he was able to do these portraits where the woman is allowed to be who she is,â she says. âHe captures the openness, the self-consciousness, the self-assurance, the insecurity. Arenât we all self-conscious? I think nobody [else] does that, and thatâs where he becomes conceptual.â In Warholâs depiction of Monroe, LĂ©vy says, he âsees the enormous sadnessâ that she felt.
Warholâs understanding of women evolved over several decades, according to LĂ©vy. As the womenâs rights movement took off in the 1960s, he was âpurely an artistâ portraying women. âThe â70s and â80s are a very different story. By then, heâs much more aware of the discussion of feminism,â she says. Warholâs concept of beauty wasnât âstereotypical,â she adds. âI think he found Gertrude Stein and Golda Meir beautiful.â Their portraits are featured in the show, along with silkscreens of Aretha Franklin, Brigitte Bardot, Dolly Parton, Warholâs mother Julia Warhola, and many others.
The show spans three floors of the galleryâs airy Upper East Side space, including its vestibule on 73rd Street. The whole room has been covered in foil, in the way of Warholâs Factory, and a screen shows some of his famous three-minute screen tests with subjects like Edie Sedgwick and Susan Sontag. On Wednesdays from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., gallery-goers can also create their own 90-second screen tests, which they can easily post toâwhere else?âInstagram.
Lee's Perspective 