Andy Warhol’s homage to the Wicked Witch of the West from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is wrapped and waiting its turn to be hung during the installation of ‘Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection’ at the LSU Museum of Art. The exhibit is now installed and will be on display through March 31.
Call it a meeting of the minds, but don’t expect all of the meetings to be cordial.
Why? Let’s just say there’s a reason the LSU Museum of Art’s latest exhibit has the words “friends and frenemies” in its title. The show’s full title is “Andy Warhol / Friends & Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection,” and it opens Jan. 11 and runs through March 31. The LSU Museum of Art is located on the fifth floor of the Shaw Center at 100 Lafayette Street in downtown Baton Rouge.
“Annie Oakley (from the Cowboys and Indians series),” 1986 by Andy Warhol © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
“(Curator) Michelle (Schulte) and I talked about it when I started here during the summer,” said Mark Tullos, the museum’s executive director. “She said she wanted the museum to have one ‘Gold Frame’ exhibit a year. This is our ‘Gold Frame’ exhibit for 2024, and the Pennington Foundation is sponsoring it.”
And, as indicated in the title, Warhol is the show’s anchor with work by other artists of his era hanging among his 36 silkscreen prints with all coming together to tell his story.
Yes, his story. That’s the way the art world revolved when Warhol skyrocketed to the top of the American art scene in the 1960s, 70s and ’80s, much to the dismay of the artists who reigned before him.
Preparator Travis Pickett, left, and Curator Michelle Schulte talk about the history behind Andy Warhol’s astronaut silkscreen while installing the exhibit, ‘Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection’ at the LSU Museum of Art. The design was used as MTV’s logo.
Museum curator Michelle Schulte describes the exhibit not only as an exhibit of extraordinary prints but as a gathering of these artists, each with their own story about the enigma that was Warhol.
Some peers loved him, some were perplexed by him and yet others could be categorized in that mix of friends and enemies — frenemies.
A sampling of silkscreen prints in the LSU Museum of Art’s exhibit, “Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection.” The show runs through March 31. Staff video by Robin Miller
“We have over 60 works in this show by artists that worked in and around the east coast,” Schulte said. “They didn’t all necessarily know Andy Warhol, but they were all producing work during this time of the late ’50s all the way up to the early ’80s. There was experimentation in art in the ’40s and ’50s after World War II, and America caught on to abstract expressionism, where people were doing this drip paintings scribbly kind of artworks.”
Queen Ntombi Twala, 1985 by Andy Warhol © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
These were the artists preceding Warhol. Of course Jackson Pollock was among them, as was Willem de Kooning.
This also is where this gathering of prints becomes more than an exhibit of works as Schulte guides the way through the gallery, looking into the prints to see the very artists who created them.
Pollock isn’t here, but de Kooning is, and the king of abstract expressionism owned the art world until Warhol stole the show.
Curator Michelle Schulte looks at a piece during the installation of ‘Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection’ at the LSU Museum of Art.
“We do have a de Kooning in this show, and though he was still producing art at this time, he was no longer the superstar of the art world,” Schulte said. “He was part of that ’50s abstract expressionism movement and one of the first celebrity artists. He was this incredibly handsome, Dutch man, hard drinking, always in a suit and women would swoon when they’d see him.”
de Kooning enjoyed his celebrity.
“People would want to stop and talk to him and get his autograph,” Schulte said. “Can you imagine artists as celebrities? These were.”
A print by abstract expressionist superstar Willem de Kooning, right, joins works by other artists who were associated with Andy Warhol in the LSU Museum of Art’s exhibit, ‘Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection.’
But then, as is the case with most celebrities, someone younger moves in with a fresher concept. In this case, abstract expressionism was giving way to pop art. But how could something as trivial as repetitive Campbell’s soup cans override serious abstract expressionism?
“Willem de Kooning saw that Warhol was sort of taking his thunder in the late ’50s and the early ’60s, because Warhol comes in, he’s younger, he’s bright, he’s getting a lot more attention and he’s getting a lot more celebrity,” Schulte said. “And so they had this tension between them. And also de Kooning was a diehard abstract expressionist, which popped out of modernism, which was accepted by the art world and the academic art world as worthwhile.”
‘Love’ 1982 by Robert Indiana © 2024 Morgan Art Foundation LTD / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
But everybody suddenly was marching in the pop art parade with Warhol as its drum major.
“It’s sort of like the young kids took over, and then they started delving real deep into the pop art and pushing abstract to its limits in terms visual identity,” Schulte said. “Andy Warhol became the celebrity, and you had all of these associates moving in and out of New York. And it was a great time of being a celebrity artist.”
Other Warhol friends and frenemies, including Robert Indiana and Roy Lichtenstein, also are represented in this show of serigraphs, etchings, woodblocks and lithographs from the private collection of Wesley and Missy Cochran of LeGrange, Georgia.
A print of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can hangs in ‘Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection’ at the LSU Museum of Art.
“They have no children, so they started loaning their collection out to museums for other people to enjoy,” Schulte said. “There are actually two collections in this show. One is the Warhol collection, and the second is the work by the other artists. We actually have both collections in this show.”
For Schulte, the exhibit would be incomplete, otherwise, Sure, Warhol’s old west and myths collections could stand on their own, but his story would be one-sided without the accompaniment of his fellow artists.
Silkscreens in Andy Warhol’s western series want to be hung during the installation of ‘Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection’ at the LSU Museum of Art.
Yes, de Kooning believed Warhol was adulterating the art world. He also thought the same of Roy Lichtenstein, who considered himself the father of pop art.
And if there were no Lichtenstein piece in the show, the story of this artist’s friend-enemy relationship with Warhol would be missing.
“Both he and Warhol were pushing the boundaries, and they were both celebrities,” Schulte said. “I think it would have been fascinating to be there at a time when artists were truly celebrities, and they were written about in gossip columns like the Kardashians are today.”
Silkscreen prints in Andy Warhol’s collection of mythical characters wait to be hunt during the installation of ‘Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection’ at the LSU Museum of Art.
But not everything was always rosy in the celebrity art world.
“Lichtenstein may have thought he was the father of pop art, but it was really Warhol,” Schulte said. “So there was some tension between them. They were frenemies.”
Schulte points out that despite his celebrity status, Warhol was an introvert, thought he knew how to play up his status and even make money from it. But in the end, one legendary surrealist artist’s overwhelming personality would overwhelm his introversion.
Silkscreen prints in Andy Warhol’s western series wait to be hung during the installation of ‘Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection’ at the LSU Museum of Art.
“He loved Salvador Dali’s work,” Schulte said. “And we have a print by Dali in this show.”
She walks to a far wall, where the Dali print hangs. The piece prompts the story of how Warhol went to meet his idol in room 1610 of New York’s St. Regis Hotel.
“Dali always stayed in that room, and he was larger than life, known for his incredible flamboyance,” Schulte said. “Andy brought a photographer with him to the meeting. When he got there, Dali totally dominated Andy. He made Andy wear an Inca headdress, and the meeting lasted only five minutes. Andy was so uncomfortable that he just had to leave.”
‘Morning Still Life’ 1976 by Jacob Lawrence © 2024 Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Foundation / Seattle Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Warhol avoided Dali for years afterward.
“It wasn’t that they didn’t get along, he was just dominated by Dali’s persona,” Schulte said. “I think that speaks to Andy’s shyness.”
Just as the many pieces in this show speak to other parts of Warhol’s life. This isn’t a story that will pop out at you — you have to look deep into the prints, silkscreens and serigraphs.
Then connect the dots.
For more information on the exhibit and its coinciding events and programs, visit lsumoa.org.
Silkscreens in Andy Warhol’s western series wait to be hung during the installation of ‘Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection’ at the LSU Museum of Art.