Face value

Andy Warhol as pop-art prince

by Leon Nigrosh

ABOUT FACE: ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS At the Wadsworth Atheneum, 600 Main Street, Hartford, Connecticut, through January 30, 2000.

Arguably the most famous artist in the past quarter-century, Andy Warhol was, and still is, an enigma. A public figure, he was also an intensely private person until his death in 1987. During the heady '60s and '70s, he became the icon of the pop art age. He helped foster the worldwide growth of the cult of personality, and yet never let anyone into his world. An adept graphic artist, he was the first to see the possibilities of incorporating commercial techniques into art. Almost in reaction to the prevalent Abstract Expressionist painting style promulgated by Gorky, Pollock, and De Kooning in the late '40s and early '50s, Warhol, through the use of photo-silkscreen techniques, eventually came to create sought-after work with no trace of the artist's touch.

The current exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum takes us through Warhol's entire career, highlighting certain portions with more than 70 drawings, paintings, prints, film clips, photographs. The show's title, "About Face," is itself a typical Warhol play on words. While it refers to the fact that the exhibit's images are all portraits, it also means that the intent has been reversed -- that Warhol was concerned with presenting something more than just a replication of his subject's face.

Even from his tentative pencil or ball-point pen drawings from the 1950s, we can see that Warhol was attempting to create a persona for his subjects and not to duplicate particular images. His spare, barely inked rendition of Edward Steichen's classic photo of Greta Garbo concentrates only on the eyes and mouth for the fullest dramatic effect. And his ball-point line drawing of James Dean deftly comments on the actor's untimely death, using only a few lines and a distant tree of flowering hearts.

It was in the 1960s that Warhol began to take full advantage of his skills by making enlargements or multiple images from newspaper pictures of famous people and silkscreening them. He then printed them in garish colors over and over. Among the examples on display are his Four Marilyns and Nine Jackies. In each case he has elevated these darlings of the paparazzi into something more introspective and engaging; the repetition and odd colorations hold our attention longer than usual. And his Mao series from 1972 served as a turning point. Although he still worked from a newspaper image, each canvas was individually ink-painted before the silkscreen image was overlaid and printed.

Soon after completing this series, Warhol stopped appropriating news photos and began to take Polaroids of his subjects. The group of lively and witty Ladies and Gentlemen is an excellent example of this new direction. Several drag queens are splashed across the wall in increasingly abstract collage-like swatches or streams of color until the last appears as a barely recognizable fusion of print and paint. Warhol went on to do commission portraits of the day's pop music stars like Liza Minnelli and Debbie Harry, dancer Rudolf Nureyev, and even millionaire land developers Samuel and Ethel LeFrak -- all of which are clustered along a wall covered with Andy Warhol wallpaper.

Which brings us to the final, and most telling group of works: Warhol's self portraits. Even at the height of his fame and in the midst of his adoring followers, he was always the private man. And these self portraits attest to that. In one work, there is only half a print, the remainder appearing to be overexposed. Another photo image shows Warhol in large, dark glasses that obscure his face. His rapidly drawn Myths: The Shadow consists of only a few pencil lines and concentrates on the blank "shadow" emanating from behind. His largest, and last self portrait, completed in 1986, features his recognizable horn-rimmed glasses and his signature tousled hair dappled in olive and brown camouflage. We are left to decide if this image is advancing from, or receding into, the surrounding inky blackness. Warhol, for all his glitz and glamor, never let us inside to discover who he really was.

The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call (860) 278-2670.