Andy Warhol: After the Party at Fotografiska Berlin: Exhibition Review

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Polaroid portraiture

As if to throw us into that deep underwater cosmos of the artist, Thomas opens the exhibition with Andy Warhol’s iconic self-portraits. Looking into his eyes, we notice a sense of sadness, mirroring his longing for this elite world and the deep agony of unfulfilled desires. The self-portraits “start early in his career, when you see him with this perfect facade and artistic avatar he created to live in this world back then in ‘70s and ‘80s New York, until the very last two self-portraits which were taken literally a few months before his passing away. That way you can get to know him and study him”.

To continue the line of investigation, we move onto his polaroid celebrity portraits, spanning from Dolly Parton to Diane Von Furstenberg to Tina Turner. His photographic method allowed him to get intimate with his guests in a non-sexual way.

“Andy was an observer, repeatedly observing communities and trying to unpeel the layers of the celebrities which he invited to the studio for the celebrity portraits. They spent hours, maybe even the full day. He offered them food, and then they drank together and they chatted, and he took hundreds of polaroids. Then, he found and captured this moment which is very pure and very honest, and that’s what I love about this work. It tells me about him through the way he uses photography in the exhibition,” commented Thomas.

A new headway for photographic methods

Andy was certainly bold in his photographic approach, reflecting his deep desire to be accepted and as a means to maintain his artificial persona. He would often take celebrities into a dark red light neighborhood, “not to scare them, but to really ground them”. Then, he would put them in a photobooth, shut the curtain, and let the machine photograph them. These photobooth strips are on display in the exhibition, along with close-up videos of celebrities that allow you to really stare into their eyes and wonder what notes the artist was taking during these sessions.

As the groundbreaker Andy was, he developed a new way of portraiture, while reiterating common elements from his work. These repetitional images served as a safety container, allowing him to fall back on his trusted repetition method and ground himself. It was sort of a way to tame his stardom obsession, and we can see it beautifully elucidated in the exhibition through different points of his life, illustrating the division between the real, vulnerable Andy and the celebrity Andy.

Before and after the party

Then there were the parties. Thomas adeptly managed to follow the transition between the height of the party night, with celebrities gathered around abundant tables, smoking cigarettes and chatting, to the after the party scene, when everyone had left but Andy.

Take a step back from the intricately arranged party photographs on the wall, look around, and you will feel like you’ve transcended into ‘70s/’80s New York. There is the dark room with the lit photographs, resembling ‘80s Hollywood glamor, the dim atmosphere, and songs such as “You Showed Me” by The Turtles, oh, and there is Andy Warhol peeking from one of the photographs on the wall arrangement. It is certain that Thomas has fine-tuned every single detail of the exhibition, from the visual elements to the audio immersion. It’s like experiencing an AR exhibition but without the technology; only through Warhol’s art and Thomas’ curatorial astuteness.

Move to the right and step into the parlor of domestic photography. Strategically placed, this part of the exhibition displays empty hotel rooms, chairs and uncleared tabletops. For Andy, they were a very personal space, because he lived there.

“Then, the after the party theme developed. We have works from the Montauk series. Montauk was his estate north of New York where he escaped from the buzzing New York city life. The interesting story about Montauk is that he acquired it with his partner, and then rented it out to celebrities. He would then invite himself as a guest and start taking pictures. There is a picture with Mick Jagger serving tea to him. I think there is a humorous side to it, so it’s very honest, very transparent, and also capitalistic in some way. Because he was a capitalist artist, he wanted to be successful and earn money,” added Thomas.