Art brief on Andy Warhol exhibit at the Portland Art Museum

I found myself confronted with a wall of Marilyns – black, white, purple, green, every color imaginable, beauty mark in a slightly different place each time – and if we’re being honest, the only emotion I felt was puzzlement.

This was at the Portland Art Museum, where a large exhibition of pop-icon pioneer Andy Warhol’s art will remain up until Dec. 31. When I say large, I really do mean large: The collection, courtesy of Portland real estate mogul Jordan Schnitzer and his family, tops 250 pieces. The exhibit charts Warhol’s extensive oeuvre (a pretentious word meaning entirety of an artist’s work) from his early shoe advertisements to his most famous works of Mao, Jackie Kennedy, and the aforementioned series of Marilyn Monroe images.

For those unfamiliar with Warhol’s work, a quick web search will show you what he’s most famous for repeated images, each in different, often garish colors. Also, soup: Apparently he loved Campbell’s Soup –a lot.

As I mentioned above, a lot of times there doesn’t seem to be much behind his work. Okay, we’ve got Marilyn Monroe. Yep, that’s what she looks like. Oh look, now she’s blue and the background is yellow. Oh wow, now she’s black and white. You don’t say. What’s this? Green? My word. And so on and so forth. The longer you stare at them, the less sense they seem to make. Why is Marilyn Monroe’s face even up here? When you look at the shape of it, it really isn’t anything special. What’s so special about her?

And what about Campbell’s Soup? Or dollar signs and Coca-Cola and Mick Jagger’s mouth? Why do we revere, discuss, and consume these things?

These are the questions that (I think) Warhol wanted us to ask. His work holds up a mirror to American consumerism and forces us to ask, Why?

At least, I think that’s what he wants. Either that, or he was an excellent, extremely wealthy con man.