Nearly three decades ago, Andy Warhol's dealer made a list of 100 prominent 20th century Jews. Warhol created silkscreen paintings of ten of them. The show, Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, premiered at The Jewish Museum in 1980. It was met with both admiration and criticism, and turned a pretty penny for the painter.
Back then, The NY Times criticized, remarking, "the show is vulgar, it reeks of commercialism, and its contribution to art is nil." While Art Forum described the ten works as "an unexpected mix of cultural anthropology, portraiture, celebration of celebrity, and study of intelligentsia all at the same time."
Warhol fans who missed out on that first exhibition have a chance to get up-close and personal with what the artist referred to as "his geniuses," (Sarah Bernhardt, Louis Brandeis, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, George Gershwin, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Golda Meir, and Gertrude Stein) as the Jewish Museum revisits the series with Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered, through August 3.
In an era where terms like "the art world" and "commercialism," are often joined, it will be interesting to see how critics react to the colorful, graphic paintings, today.
Photo via C-Monster's Flickr.
