Skulls

by Vincent A. Rizzo 

The exhibition immediately pulled me in with intense colors and patterns that made the rooms vibrate. Skulls (1976), an abstracted view of a skull, was particularly striking because it wasn’t what I expected from Warhol. I personally enjoyed it the most because it is like a memento mori, signaling the inevitability of death but highlighted with bold color.  Skulls, like most of his silkscreen prints, look as though it follows his “machine-made” aesthetic. Throughout my time in the exhibition, I attempted to imagine as if I was at one of Warhol’s exhibitions during his lifetime. This was not entirely difficult, as I had honestly never seen a lot of the silkscreen prints and designs. The new images gave me new insight into his more popular works. After a few laps around the exhibition, I decided that his early work definitely appeals more to my idea of pop art, and that is what I like most.