People are Everywhere

by  Lucy

COLOR smeared underneath the black contours of a face. Marilyn’s face. Her glimmering smile is red; eyes: pink. Just what I wanted. Silver rectangles are clouds, in the air, at your feet. Swirling around you. Movement, images, colors—all chosen for you, the viewer. Just inside the door I am reminded that something is happening.  Big dreams, fabrications and realities alike line the walls. Once inside, I found myself witnessing a reflection of a popular culture. The images felt like situations. Each one seemed to have an atmosphere triangulated by repetition, image, and color. The images felt subtly relentless through their layers. Like something previously unknown was making itself visible. You can see the distortions, however intentional, in the faces of Marilyn and Mick, Sitting Bull or Geronimo. In looking at them, do you see a Native American and get excited? Or does the image stir sadness for past injustices? Do the boldly layered colors remind you of anything? Is it a Western movie? Warhol’s ability to create artworks that interact with people is rather sophisticated. Popular opinion is being reflected by the image and digested by the viewer. It’s Warhol’s process repeated again. It’s as though you cannot attend this Warhol show without becoming the context.​ Watching someone while s/he looks at a Warhol could almost be as effective as looking at a Warhol. Standing in a room with Edie Sedgwick’s blinking eyes, Polaroids of people that I convince myself I care about, and Charles Lutz’s Denied Warhols I feel like I’m at a party and everyone is drunk, except me. It seems to be a beautiful, but fairly screwed up thing.