ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 12, 1996 TAG: 9604120030
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS
Someone once said that Andy Warhol made fame famous. The painter's images of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Liz Taylor, Jacqueline Onassis, Mao Tse-tung and former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (shown here) have become a part of America's cultural backdrop.
"Warhol painted popular idols," says Anna Fariello, director of Radford University's Flossie Martin Gallery where you'll find a display of the artist's early work. The exhibit, featuring Warhol's early portraits as well as his famous Campbell's Soup can paintings, remains in the gallery through Sunday. It's on loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Fariello says this is one exhibit art lovers won't want to miss. Warhol, she explains, is a legendary figure of the 20th century.
"His elevation of the commonplace elements into American icons gave new meaning to popular culture. ... Besides his impact on the image, Warhol's contribution to the art of our time has been his influence on the way art is made, freeing artists to use methods largely associated with commercial production."
A founder of the "pop-art" movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Warhol was known for his still life paintings of banal commercial products. He introduced the soup cans in 1961 and later painted Coca-Cola bottles and Brillo boxes. The works attempted to show the dehumanization that had become an acceptable part of American life.
A 1963 interview revealed Warhol's tongue-in-cheek artistic attitude: "I want to be a machine," he said.
The exhibit at Flossie Martin Gallery is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today and from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. The gallery is closed Saturday. Admission is free.
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: This work or former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir isby CNBamong the pieces in the Andy Warhol exhibit. color.