The Pictures are There, and You Just take Them
Riddle pops along to view photographs of Andy Warhol, kept in archive for nearly 50 years, landing for the first time in the UK
Article by Andy Barnham
Florida based KIWI Arts Group is hosting a month long exhibition of photographs of Andy Warhol by William John Kennedy at A&D Gallery, 51 Chiltern Street. Unveiled at Art Basel, Miami, in 2010 this is the first time this collection has been seen in the UK. The photographs are a combination of posed and candid images of Warhol on the cusp of his stardom, shot in 1964, which then languished in a box for nearly five decades. Heading to the rubbish bin, a chance inspection of the box revealed and saved the negatives otherwise destined for oblivion.
Introduced to Warhol by the artist Robert Indiana, Kennedy captured Warhol with his work, in addition to being at work, combing the artist and his art. The exhibition starts with a candid shot of Warhol and Indiana, taken at the meeting Indiana made the introductions, of an uncharacteristically smiling Warhol sans shades and also shows, in sequence, the series of photographs that Kennedy took of Warhol holding the acetate of Marilyn Monroe from which Warhol would later create the ‘Shot Marilyns’. The posed photographs include Warhol literally wearing his ‘Little Race Riots’ on a home made sandwich board and also posing with his ‘American Man’. Here, Warhol has removed one of the portraits of his ‘American Man’, Watson Powell, and adopts the pose of his subject framed though the gap.
To fans, who can recognise the nuances of Warhol’s normally deadpan expression and are familiar with the (non) interaction he had with his work, the exhibition offers an insight behind the public persona. Indeed The AndyWarhol Museum in Pittsburgh regards the photos in such high esteem that one of them stands 4 meters tall and is the focal point of the museum. For casual admirers wishing to potential uncover new information about the pop artist, the exhibition does little to answer the fascination of the cult figure and his enduring appeal. Indeed they may leave the gallery with more questions than before; if the shots were deemed not important enough to be printed in the 1960s and left in a box, why should they be of such prominence now? It seems strange that photos of Warhol would remain unprocessed for 50 years. The photos also fall into the bracket where the subject is more, and in this case far more, important than the photographer, with the shots offering a limited insight to who William John Kennedy is. On show from now until 19th December. 
Enquiries:
KIWI Arts Group/ kiwiartsgroup.com
A&D Gallery/ 020 7486 0534/ www.aanddgallery.com