Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters 1962–1964

last updated 8 January 2015

Andy Warhol's images were 'œdesigned to be ubiquitous and familiar,' said Katherine Monk in the Montreal Gazette. Exhibits of his work can therefore feel awfully repetitive. After all, Warhol strove to become a 'œmachine-like creator,' often making the same piece several times over. But as ubiquitous as his images are, 'œyou haven't really seen Warhol until you've seen him through the eyes of David Cronenberg.' The Art Gallery of Ontario hired the Canadian film director (Crash, A History of Violence, Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers) to conceive and narrate this show, employing his 'œdependably disturbing artistic sensibilities.' It's no surprise, then, that he focuses on Warhol's darkest images, such as Foot and Tire, a blown-up news photo of a dead pedestrian's sole under the wheels of a truck. Though Warhol's celebrity and disaster images are often shown separately, Cronenberg fuses Warhol's oeuvre 'œas a continuous investigation of death.'

Cronenberg has also keyed into the 'œspiritual and physical in Warhol's work,' said Peter Goddard in the Toronto Star. Warhol was a practicing Catholic, who shared a New York townhouse with his devout mother, Julia, even through his celebrity years. He attended Mass every Sunday, to participate in 'œa transcendental event of sharing in the body and blood of Christ.' The body was central to Warhol's work. And a focus on the body inevitably leads to death, and thoughts of immortality. Two paintings exclusive to this show embody this focus: White Burning Car III (1963), depicting a man impaled on a telegraph pole, and 1947-White (1963), showing a woman who jumped from the top of the Empire State Building embedded in the roof of a limousine.