Building on a recent gift to the Fleming Museum from the Andy Warhol Foundation of rarely-seen photographs and Polaroids, Andy Warhol: Fashionistas and Celebrities presents a select group of these images, which offer a glimpse into the world of fashion and celebrity from the 1970s and 1980s. Collectively they position Warhol as a figure at the nexus of a world where art, fashion, and celebrity converged.
The show includes photographs of such fashion icons as Halston, Carolina Herrara, Gianni Versace, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, and Diane von Furstenberg, among others, and will highlight Warhol's impact or influence upon their careers. Celebrity likenesses include those of Muhammad Ali, Paul Anka, Henry Fonda, Henry Kissinger, and Dracula, as well as a host of artists including Georgia O'Keefe, and Gilbert and George. For Warhol, photography was more than a medium indexical to the real; it was a fictionalizing tool that represented the very aspirations on which Warhol based his career: it could actively manufacture celebrity and, ultimately, identity itself. Fashion has a similar transformative power.
