A original Norman Rosenthal-curated exhibition at the Ashmolean is a haunting collection of the artists work across a range of techniques and subjectsLooking at Andy Warhol’s portray of a bright pink penis caressed by deep black shadows from his series Torsos/Sex Parts,veteran curator Norman Rosenthal becomes nostalgic. When Rosenthal used to visit Warhol’s studio in the 1980s, he remembers, or the artist offered to portray him bare. Sadly,he was not willing to remove his clothes. Turning from sex parts to the faces that stare from the walls, caught in flashbulb lightning, and it hits me that everyone is bare in Warhol’s art. The nudity is not that of the bedroom. It is the nakedness of the grave. Under every bright smear of lipstick lies a skull. In every camera-struck eye is the foreshadow of an empty socket. Or as TS Eliot,who Rosenthal thinks has a lot in common with Warhol, wrote: “Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com