"IN THE FUTURE EVERYONE WILL BE WORLD FAMOUS FOR 15 MINTUES"

- Andy Warhol-

If you’re like me and believe that you are destined to have your fifteen minutes, spare a thought for Andy Warhol, he has already had his time and people all over the world still want more.

Born the not-so-cool Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Warhol moved to New York in 1949 where he found steady work as a commercial artist creating illustrations for the likes of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and The New Yorker – not bad for a fresh young Carnegie Institute of Technology Pictorial Design graduate. Ironically, his first major assignment was for Glamour magazine for an article titled “Success is a job in New York”.

Not so it seems for one Andrew Warhola. His midtown Manhattan “Factory” boasted an almost infinite turnstile of comings and goings by some of the worlds greatest musicians, artists and famous-for-being-famous types including Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg and Salvador Dali, not to mention the frequent spattering of muse-cum-model visitors like Edie Sedgwick and Anita Pallenberg. It was one long party for Factory guests – a virtual orgy of visual, mental and sexual stimulation. The “Factory” provided a haven for the eccentric, a place where the unlikeliest of people got their 15 minutes of fame.

It was here in the Silver surrounds that Warhol used an enormous variety of mediums including painting, drawing, print, sculpture, photography, film and installation to comment on mainstream America while indignantly dismissing its stubborn social morals. Graphic sexuality, explicit drug use, same-sex and transgender sexual relations and nudity were objectified and celebrated in this radical environment where anything and everything goes.

In the first ever Australian major retrospective, some 300 influential and less recognised pieces of Warhol’s works will be on display at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMa) from December 8 to March 30. Sure, we’ve been inundated with Warhol tributes of late, and certainly you’re probably sick to death of the Factory Girl film talk, but there really is nothing like standing in front of one of these iconic images to really steal your breath away for a second. Go on, I bet that if you stand there for a moment, you can be transported back to a place where you too can have your fifteen minutes of fame, even if only in your head.

qag.qld.gov.au