(AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)
Paris Grand Palais
A large exhibition of Andy Warhol's iconic celebrity portraits and commissioned canvases has opened at the Grand Palais in Paris through July 13th. will be presented Warhol produced an estimated 1,000 portraits, the majority of them commissions. "He used to say, 'I have to pay the rent; I have to bring home the bacon,'" says the exhibit's curator, Alain Cueff. Most of the portraits are 40 inches by 40 inches: “They have to be the same size,” Warhol insisted, “so that they all fit together and make one big painting called Portraits of Society.” The society that emerges at the Grand Palais looks suspiciously like the one you would have found in glossy magazines of the period. The show arranges the portraits of some 130 subjects by profession, so Mick Jagger, his famous lips a delicate baby pink, shares a room with Blondie's Debbie Harry. There is a portrait of a green-faced Richard Nixon, interspersed among the Maos, a 1972 series of paintings of the Chinese leader that includes a monumental-size canvas in blue and military drab. The hall dedicated to movie stars brings together portraits of Marlon Brando — made from a still from his 1953 motorcycle movie "The Wild One" — Dennis Hopper, Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda and Sylvester Stallone. A 1974 portrait of Brigitte Bardot was commissioned by her husband of three years, German playboy, Gunther Sachs, who also had himself painted, Cueff said. "I always thought of it as gesture of gentlemanliness and panache, giving them to her after their separation," Cueff said. "But in fact, he didn't give them to her at all. He kept them." In 1985, movie star Lana Turner commissioned a pair of portraits in a bid to jump-start her lagging career. The exhibition catalog quotes Warhol as complaining about the difficulty of "transforming a 60-year-old woman into a 25-year-old girl." Warhol's iconic, 1962 portraits of Marilyn Monroe smile out from another wall. "Twenty Marilyns" shows the same image with similar coloring repeated over and over, like on book of stamps. Warhol was fascinated with Monroe and had collected images of her. After her 1962 suicide, he chose one to paint, with dead eyes and a pasted-on smile that convey her inner sadness. It was Monroe paintings that launched Warhol into the lucrative business of commissioned portraits. Upon seeing the Marilyns, New York cab company owner and art collector Robert Scull thought of having his wife done, Cueff said. The result, "Ethel Scull 36 Times," features three dozen photo booth pictures of Ethel Scull — laughing, pursing her lips, donning sunglasses — in a rainbow of colors. By the early 1970s, Warhol's atelier, known as the Factory, had developed a systematic technique for mass producing the portraits. The process started with Polaroid Big Shot camera snapshots, often taken by assistants. The chosen image was then transferred to a large-scale sheet of acetate, which Warhol used as a guide in painting the canvas. Finally, he silkscreened over the color-blocked canvas, a process he developed as a commercial photographer. Warhol charged $25,000 for the first painting and another $15,000 for every additional canvas. Most subjects bought diptychs. One client, wealthy Colorado businessman John Powers, bought 25 paintings of his Japanese-born wife, Kimiko, wearing a kimono. People tend to think of Warhol, a fixture of New York's party scene, as "someone frivolous, superficial," said Cueff. "But when you look at these portraits, it's impossible not to see his humanity, his generosity in the way he treats his subjects." Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent’s heir, canceled a loan of four portraits of his late partner after he learned that they would share a wall with pictures of other fashion designers. He insisted on the portraits being hung in the artists’ section. Not all of the 130 portraits at the Grand Palais are grouped by profession. Among the artists, you find Man Ray, David Hockney, Joseph Beuys and Keith Haring; among the show- business people there are Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Mick Jagger and Sylvester Stallone. There are art dealers, collectors, politicians and jet-set glitterati such as Princess Diana and Princess Caroline of Monaco. After the success of the Mao pictures -- some of which are in the show -- there was no lack of candidates who yearned for stardom to be conferred by the man with the silver wig. In the 1970s and 1980s, up to his sudden death in 1987, Warhol churned out some 1,000 portraits. Alain Cueff, the curator of the exhibition, thinks that Warhol was inspired by the icons of the Orthodox Eastern Church. Cueff also likens Warhol to a plastic surgeon: Each of the sitters could be certain that he or she would look more glamorous on canvas than they were in real life. Some critics argue that Warhol was parodying the U.S. cult of celebrity the better to deflate it. The gushing tone of “Interview” -- his gossip magazine, 40 covers of which are on view at the Grand Palais -- tells a different story. In the last room, you find a couple of morbid paintings that have nothing to do with the portraits -- skulls and the electric chair from Sing Sing prison in upstate New York. Are they hinting at some dark mystery surrounding Warhol’s death? Paul Warhola, Andy's brother, has suggested to people that he believed his brother had been murdered.
