YOUR DATE IS IN THE SHADOWS

Shadows 

by Guidepost

The GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM BILBAO is exhibiting Andy Warhol’s Shadows 26 February – 2 October 2016. All 102 canvases of them.

It isn’t always possible to show all the canvases at once simply because of their monumental scale.

Warhol, arguably the King of Pop Art, created the polyptych in 1978 which, though consisting of scores of silkscreened and handpainted canvases of distorted photographs of shadows generated in Warhol’s studio, was conceived as a single work. In fact the series is composed of only two compositional variations.

One might be tempted to think that the sheer size of the canvases mocks the banality of the theme.

Warhol showed the series for the first time the year following its creation but it wasn’t until 1992 that the whole was shown under one roof – that is, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.

With lots of black for stark contrast, Shadows’ monochrome colors include Carmine red, midnight blue, chartreuse, silver, eggplant, yellow and 11 others.

Andy Warhol: Shadows
GUGGENEIM MUSEUM BILBAO
Abandoibarra Etorb., 2, 48009 Bilbao, Basque Country (Spain)
26 February – 2 October 2016

Featured image,  Warhol’s Shadows  by BBCLCD, CC BY-SA4.0 via Wikimedia Commons