| Long criticized by conservative critics for producing art that lacked a personal style, with Mao Warhol introduced abstract motifs into his pictures, an obvious if overdetermined attempt at painterly expression. In the Corcoran’s example, vigorously applied swaths in orange, lavender, and blue mainly underlie but sometimes overlap the black screen-printed visage. When examined in the context of a single painting, these swaths represent the artist’s straightforward attempt to situate his work within the canon of heroic expressive painting. To compete with Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock—Warhol’s stated ambition—he knew that he would have to be recognized as a painter qua painter. In the context of their original installation, however, the gestures seem repetitious and empty of meaning, owing to their haphazard application and lack of correlation between their placement and the picture they underpin. . . .
:: Jonathan P. Binstock, Curator of Contemporary Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art |
Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from
the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
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