Review of Andy Warhol’s exhibition of over 200 works in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery.

Is it worth it to see?

To be quite honest, it is worth to see if you like Andy Warhol as an artist. I was never a huge fan of his work, I loved his work ethic and how he approached art from a complete mindset of a business where he even called his artist studio a ‘factory’. That being said, some of the works on display were hugely evocative and elicited some form inspiration, especially with the scale of some of the bigger works. Even though his most famous iconic print of all time was on display, the tomato soup print, it lacked something to me. I spent less than three minutes looking at it until I was bored and moved onto the next work.

What really stood out most was the self portrait and the prints of the almost psychiatric chair, each print of this chair was of a different hue. The red colour was the most striking and almost haunting, but at least it got me interested for more than three minutes. The huge photographs which were edited with almost photoshop like effects were pretty interesting in relation to the series of self portraits. I found they invited us into the perception this artist wanted to portray of himself. Edgy, mysterious, creative all these assumptions came to mind when seeing the huge self portrait prints.

My least favourite artwork was probably the dollar sign. It just represents currency, and of course there is more to it than that. It represents and reaffirms the prestige and control this artist has over currency as his art still fetches millions for works sold at auction. To me there was no emotional quality to this, just a blatant symbol of power. However, there was an artwork which I did not photograph while I was here and that was of a collaborative piece that he must have worked on with Jean Michelle Basquiat and I really enjoy his work. JMB’s work is so riveting and gritty full of violent colour and life, and it is sad that we have not yet seen a collection of his work in the Hugh Lane. Perhaps one day his work will be exhibited there too. Who knows. Anyways thanks for reading and there will be more short reviews like this coming again soon.