"Warhol & Jackie: Artist and Icon" Opens in Dallas March 21

Warhol & Jackie: Artist and Icon features Andy Warhol’s iconographic paintings and screen prints of Jackie Kennedy which were created between 1963 and 1968 in the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy. Warhol & Jackie will occupy the entire Seventh Floor Gallery—a total of 5,500 square feet of exhibition space. The sequence of galleries is designed to give visitors a variety of experiences, including an immersive environment and focused learning space for programs and presentations. The exhibition explores the themes of fame, glamour, propaganda, and devotion and highlights the roles of religion and repetition in Andy Warhol’s assassination related art. The exhibit opens on March 21 and closes on October 26.

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, in an innovative partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum, has created an exhibit that places a selection of Warhol’s fine art in context of assassination artifacts. This collaboration will approach Warhol’s work differently than traditional art museum exhibitions. Combined with source materials and related historical artifacts, the result will be a carefully contextualized examination of the artist’s response to, and packaging of, the assassination and its key players.

Warhol & Jackie includes Flash-November 22, 1963; Red Jackie; two Warhol self-portraits and 30 single Jackie portraits and explores Warhol’s art in two tightly focused and deeply personal areas: his thoughtful narrative presentation of the Flash series and the devotional images of Jackie in various shades of blue, gold, white, and gray. An examination of the influence of the artist’s intense religiosity on his work will also be included.

Designed to evoke the environment of Warhol’s studio, the exhibit includes a representation of The Factory, the New York studio where Warhol produced his mass media art and films from 1963-1968. Large-scale reproductions of Billy Name’s photographs, The Factory photographer and studio superintendent, document The Factory scene, both as a studio and as the center of the Pop Art world. Here, visitors will see examples of Warhol’s silk screening techniques and methodology along with numerous artifacts from the Archives of The Andy Warhol Museum. Notable are Warhol’s magazines depicting Jackie as a celebrity, some of which became the maquettes for the Jackie paintings.

In November, Warhol & Jackie: Artist and Icon will travel to The Andy Warhol Museum giving Pittsburgh audiences a unique opportunity to commemorate the 40th anniversary of President Kennedy’s death with art.

Warhol & Jackie: Artist and Icon is organized by The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in cooperation with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The installation in The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza’s innovative Seventh Floor Gallery was designed by guest curator Dr. Richard Brettell, Professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and former Director of the Dallas Museum of Art in collaboration with the original architect of the expansion, Gary Cunningham of Cunningham Architects. The exhibition is supported in part by The Dallas Morning News, WFAA-TV and American Airlines.

Flash-November 22, 1963, a recent acquisition of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, is a series of 11 screenprints and text that replicates news wire copy. Completed in 1968, Warhol produced 236 portfolios; 200 were sold and the artist retained the other sets. Flash is an examination of the events of the assassination and its aftermath filtered through Warhol’s observations of the continuous barrage of media coverage.

Initially, Warhol ignored the assassination itself, preferring to construct a sequence of images of grief and acceptance on the part of the fallen president’s widow. Warhol appropriated images from the media, using well-known photographs depicting the smiling President and First Lady at Love Field and riding in the motorcade; Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas police station; and the alleged murder weapon. Presented in sequential order, the prints create the effect of a news story. The representation of single images in narrative style is a departure for an artist known for repetition and multiple images. Three prints show the President in resonant shades of green, magenta and blue, over a field of orange. One silver-on-silver multi-imaged print features the rifle held aloft, a news photo of the First Lady and three presidential seals, the largest torn by bullet holes. A bright pink and red piece features a director’s clapboard superimposed over an image of Oswald and a policeman, suggesting the cinematic quality of the work. Though similar in style to actual news wire service copy from 1963, Warhol apparently commissioned an original version to accompany the prints. The portfolio is rarely seen in its entirety.

This exhibition may be the first time the prints will be shown with the complete text.

The Sixth Floor Museum is open daily from 9am to 6pm. Tickets for The Sixth Floor Museum and Warhol & Jackie: Artist and Icon are $10 for adults, $9 for seniors, students and children 6-18. Children 5 and under are free. Audio tours are available for the Museum’s permanent exhibit is available at an additional charge.

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