Andy Warhol: Velvet Rage And Beauty

Exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 9 June - 6 October 2024

Although Andy Warhol (1928-1987) became famous for his depictions of consumer products and celebrities, there is a common thread running through his career, from the late 1940s until his untimely death. From his earliest line and blur drawings to his screen tests and experiments with moving images in the 1960s, via his torso paintings of the 1970s and his collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat, there was a constant search to express an ideal of masculine beauty. During his lifetime, these works were considered inappropriate, immoral, deviant, even pornographic, and therefore illegal. Many of these works never received the public exposure and recognition they deserved.

This exhibition catalogue brings together for the first time a wide-ranging survey of this central thematic aspect of the different phases of production and stages in Warhol's career. This publication offers a glimpse of a Warhol who, during his lifetime, never really had a 'coming-out'.