ANDY WARHOL LIVE Exhibit at the Musee des beaux-arts in Montreal

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I walked in nonplussed, wondering what were they thinking. But I left more than two hours later, quite impressed, not so much by the art - that type of work is rather subjective - but by the misty nostalgia with which it left me. Warhol's pieces are more than an art form. As a whole they are remnants of an epoch, an era that I am afraid I am way too familiar with. The rooms, all relating Warhol's creations to the music scene between the sixties and eighties, are an accumulation of items - records covers, photos, films, canvases and magazines - that encapsulate an era of pop culture that must have shaped Warhol as much as he influenced it.

ANDY WARHOL LIVE is nowhere like walking into an art exhibit. Beware you will be entering a hypnotic time warp, one that is very hard to keep your eyes from. I felt as if I was relating to a past, most probably mine, realizing just how colorful and vivid it was back then. Perhaps of limited artistic value to me, I was nonetheless mesmerized by the items on display as if I'd understood them.

B+