Exhibitions
Andy Warhol: Portraits; Cecil Collins: works from the collection of Elisabeth Collins (Anthony d'Offay, till 28 May)
The wig and brush
Giles Auty
In a week in which we learn that Britain's first national museum of modern art is to be housed within the disused structure of a huge power station one must hope that the grandiose new site will not encourage any corresponding exercise of naked power. I fear we need fresh stan- dards of accountablility among our art administrators more urgently than new buildings if living art is to play some real
and beneficial role in our future lives. A huge number of people have come by now to despise many of the manifestations of contemporary practice which are thrust upon them through publicly subsidised gal- leries in Britain. In short, I doubt whether too many folk, including artists, will be cheering a vast new extension to the Tate Gallery's existing powers. This theme may reward some examining in the weeks to come.
In the meantime I apologise to Leslie Waddington who tells me he is closing down only one of his mini-empire of Cork Street galleries rather than all, as I report- ed recently. By contrast, his counterpart at the other end of Bond Street is extending his dominion of Dering Street by the addi- tion of yet another gallery space. Perhaps Anthony d'Offay expects to become an even larger supplier of art to the multi- sited Tate galleries of the future.
What sort of art will regale us at the con- verted bankside power station when it re- opens finally in its future guise? The art of Andy Warhol is sure to feature prominent- ly so the present is as good a time as any to put his achievement in perspective. A large display of Warhol's portraits fills two of d'Offay's premises. Portraiture was a major part of Mr Warhol's oeuvre and the critic of the Daily Telegraph has compared him already in this respect, somewhat surpris- ingly, with Toulouse-Lautrec. Perhaps my own response to Warhol's art is coloured by the fact that at the the time of his death, the artist was reputed to be the owner of 800 wigs. He was wearing only one of these, askew, on the sole occasion I met him. The basis of his art lay in that pirating of vulgar culture known generally as Pop. To this Warhol added high camp gloss in his portraits, at least. Much of his other work, from earlier times especially, may strike many as paralysingly inert. I must confess I have hardly any sympathy for the manifestations or creeds of Pop Art and differ in this from many of my professional colleagues who are impelled to orgasms of nostalgia at the mere mention of the Six- ties, a time of almost unrelieved superfi- ciality, silliness and sickness. Warhol's art merely adds an element of slightly more
sinister sophistication to these delightful attributes. Many of the portraits on view are of fellow homosexuals: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Robert Map- plethorpe, Rudolf Nureyev and David Hockney, for instance, a few of whom are still alive. Women — Judy Garland, Jerry Hall, Joan Collins, Dolly Parton, Debbie Harry and their like — are handled rather more oddly. While the faces of all, of either gender, are formed from photographs, those of women are treated generally as though Warhol were a make-up artist, enlarging the lips, experimenting with the colour of hair and skin colour. The overall effect is dehumanising as though sitters amounted to nothing more than their vul- gar fame or useful orifices.
Warhol was obsessed with wealth and power and the sexuality of others. The exis- tence of a human soul is never hinted at; here are portraits which are scarcely skin- deep. Portraits earned Warhol an impor- tant part of the huge income he needed, possibly for wigs. In a catalogue essay eulo- gising Warhol's portraits, the American academic Robert Rosenblum attempts to argue a place for Warhol in the history of serious portrait painting. Since the art critic of the Daily Telegraph, who compared Warhol so flatteringly with Lautrec, is also North American it is easy to conclude there may be something about Warhol's supposed talent that renders it perceptible to Americans, but all but invisible to us less effusive Europeans.
While the art of Warhol is described by his panegyrists as funky, that of Cecil Collins tends to be of a cranky nature. Collins died five years ago when in his early eighties. His odd, metaphysical art scarcely acknowledged life on this planet. He was away, if not with the fairies, at least with angelic clowns and demi-gods. I find much of his later art repetitious and sentimental yet his youthful vision and independence and imagination aplenty. While Collins ignored mortal life, Warhol made it seem shallow and tacky.
Emerging from their exhibitions into spring sunshine, I restored my enduring faith in the value of the everyday by a pleasant walk in the park.
.1'm into leather.'
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