Thinking that just maybe it’s never too late to be a ‘poster girl’, and especially if some serious photo-editing is involved, I thought I’d give myself the Warhol treatment for this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge. It’s perhaps also a metaphor for the state of me – spreading myself in too many directions at once.
…just look at my spuds!
This is my take on the Daily Post’s ‘life imitates art’ photo challenge – a posterized still-life of last summer’s allotment harvest. I suppose you could also call it a potato print. Anyway, it is my nod to Andy Warhol’s poster art:
Andy Warhol’s Banana
Of course, as a gardener, I regard anything I grow as a work of art. Coming up next are borlotti beans, corn, zinnias and dill – rendered on the kitchen table after the Flemish still-life school:
Looking ahead to this year’s garden produce art works, I’m just hoping that my asparagus beds might do something wonderful, then I could come up with something like this. I have the red currants:
“My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person.”
Andy Warhol
Mao Zedong by Andy Warhol (1928‑1987)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan
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Andy Warhol became interested in China in 1971. “I have been reading so much about China. They’re so nutty. They don’t believe in creativity. The only picture they ever have is of Mao Zedong. It’s great. It looks like a silkscreen”.
The following year he began work on the portrait, which grew into ten variations, all based on the portrait that appears in Little Red Book: the thoughts of Chairman Mao.
In 2012 the portraits were part of the touring art show ‘Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal’. The exhibition, organised by the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, marked the 25th anniversary of Warhol’s death. The Mao portraits, however, did not make an appearance in either Beijing or Shanghai when the show went to Asia in 2013. The official Chinese view was that the portraits were disrespectful in suggesting that the former leader wore make-up. All the same, Mao Zedong’s legacy is currently undergoing some re-evaluation in China. There are even admissions that mistakes were made. It is a start…
For more juxtapositions go to Weekly Photo Challenge
Tish Farrell 