Author and professor Reva Wolf '78, returned to campus on Thursday to speak about Image Machine: Andy Warhol and Photography, one of the current exhibitions on view at the Rose Art Museum. As a professor of art history at the State University of New York, New Paltz, she specializes in one of America's most beloved pop heroes and is the author of Andy Warhol: Poetry and Gossip in the 1960s. Wolf added another dimension to the exhibition during her gallery talk by exploring its three main themes: pictures, meaning and context. The exhibition, curated by former Rose Director Joseph Ketner, amasses photographs and works of art throughout Warhol's career to craft a narrative of Warhol as an "image maker."

Wolf expanded on Warhol's fascination with the camera by exploring how Warhol frequently photographed individuals. He utilized "people of all kinds," Wolf said, whether they were intimate friends, first-time acquaintances or popular celebrities who he found fascinating. Warhol had a tendency to not only combine painting and photography in his work, but to also heavily rely on photography as subject matter, source material and medium, enabling him to appropriate any image.

During Warhol's early career, he never took photographs, and instead employed friends to take pictures. By the 1970s, however, once Warhol had developed an affinity for the camera, he used Polaroids for portraiture. He would take hundreds of Polaroids, lay them out and then carefully pick which image to use. The process, though tedious, brings to light how exacting Warhol was with his photographs, even while using such simple equipment.

Warhol also dabbled with videos and created a series of video portraits, which originally used celluloid, but for the purpose of modern-day exhibitions, were later transferred onto DVDs. The video portraits mimic the composition of Polaroids-they are up-close and intimate shots of the individuals' faces. Warhol slowed down the videos, giving a languorous quality to the films as we observe the subtle physical nuances of such iconic figures as Susan Sontag, Edie Sedgwick and Jane Holzer.

The second theme that Wolf explored was meaning, as Warhol was fond of playing with and interpreting the meaning of the symbols and images he employed in his work. For example, in "Torsos," Warhol's series of photographs of male genitals, we are forced to ask where one draws the line between art and pornography. Warhol does not crudely display the male genitals but rather employs age-old artistic practices such as repetition of form, which draws to mind art in antiquity, to make the images appear more acceptable and appropriate for the modern art world.

Wolf subtly addressed the final theme context throughout her discussion but she stressed the theme during the "Silver Clouds" and "Cow Wall Paper" pieces. Originally, "Silver Clouds" and the "Cow Wall Paper" were on display in two different rooms. The inflatable balloons of "Silver Clouds," created by Warhol in collaboration with an engineer, Billy Kluver, were filled with weights to ensure that they floated at a particular height in order to create an ephemeral and impermanent quality.
Meanwhile, the "Cow Wall Paper" consists of a neon, emblazoned cow against a stark background. Displayed separately, the works represented different aspects of an idyllic landscape. Yet, coupled together at the Rose, the two pieces show just how artificial the idyllic landscape is.

Warhol had a rather tongue-in-cheek perspective on the relationship between art and photography. In fact, during an interview, Wolf revealed anecdotally that when Warhol was asked what he thought art was, he replied with, "I don't believe in art. I believe in photography." It is important to understand Warhol's use of sarcasm-and though his comment can be read as flippant, it is also clear that Warhol was making a distinction between art and photography. After all, throughout his oeuvre it is clear to see how he liked to make viewers uncomfortable by forcing them to catalogue works as "art" and "not art."
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