Warhol: The Athletes
Through July 12
Oklahoma City Museum of Art | Oklahoma City
I first discovered Andy Warhol through my middle school obsession with The Velvet Underground and all things Lou Reed. That banana-emblazoned record … Who was this Andy guy? What did he have to do with the Velvets? Was Lou’s favorite fruit a banana? I had to know.
Jump ahead about 10 years, and I’m now well versed in all things Warholian — read a couple books, seen a couple paintings, bought the 50th anniversary Campbell’s soup cans from Target — so when I saw that the Oklahoma City Museum of Art would host Andy Warhol: The Athletes, I melted a little. The only athletic group (that’s the term, right?) I follow is the Thunder, but sports be damned. If Warhol silk-screened athletes, then I would happily look at those sporty portraits and proclaim to be taking up wiffle ball.
As a member of OKCMOA Moderns (look into it, Oklahomies), I was pumped to be invited to an early viewing of the exhibit last week and to meet Warhol confidant and collector Richard Weisman. Friends for about a decade, Weisman commissioned Warhol to create The Athletes in 1978. As Weisman recounted it, during a shoot, Warhol famously asked Jack Nicklaus to move his “stick a little to the left.” Nicklaus had no idea what to take from this strange creature before him. Warhol’s eccentricity — his penchant for the dramatic, his flair for the absurd — is what makes this collection so great. The juxtaposition of strong, stoic figures with the stylings of one of America’s most prolific pop-art artists is pretty cool, to say the least.
Weisman selected the athletes for the series because, as he described it, “Warhol didn’t know the difference between a football and a golf ball.” Likewise, I wasn’t familiar with all those featured, but some of my favorite portraits were of Dorothy Hamill, Muhammad Ali, Chris Evert, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar and, fittingly, Jack Nicklaus.
In an adjacent room, 44 of Warhol’s Polaroid portraits are on display, as is a reel of memorable film-screen tests from the early ’60s featuring the likes of Bob Dylan, Edie Sedgwick, Salvador Dalí and — you guessed it — Lou Reed. An intimate foray into those closest to Andy, the film reels alone are worth seeing.
As Weisman so eloquently put it, “Andy would go to the opening of an envelope.” In commissioning this series, he hoped those who had never before ventured into an art museum would find themselves drawn out of their comfort zones and into a space where their perceptions were challenged.
You have until July 12 to check out Warhol: The Athletes, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a jock, an art freak or somewhere in between — go see it.
