Arts
Award-winning artist Alison Jackson has made a film for The South Bank Show, looking in to our obsession with celebrity through the works of Andy Warhol.
Alison explores how Andy Warhol understood the power of celebrity imagery better than anyone else before or since. He founded the original gossip magazine, Interview and introduced the concept of “15 minutes of fame”. But was Warhol celebrating celebrity or was there an underlying irony to his output? What would he make of today’s celebrity-driven society and the increasingly commercialised art world that has shifted from aesthetics to money?
Alison considers Warhol’s major iconic pieces: Marilyn, Mao, Elvis, Mick, and talks about the importance of these beautiful works and how Warhol influences her own work.
Alison travels to the United States and visits Warhol’s old haunts that were key to his life and work. She meets contemporaries who were close to him on both a personal and professional level including: Bob Colacello (editor of Interview magazine1970–1982), Billy Name, Brigid Berlin, Gerard Malanga (Warhol’s Assistant); also Liza Minelli and Joan Collins who were part of Warhol’s iconic images. She travels to Pittsburgh and meets Warhol’s brother John Warhola and visits the Byzantine Rite Church where he took inspiration for his work.
Over 20 years after Warhol’s death, Alison’s work is a logical extension of Warhol’s. In today's increasingly celebrity-obsessed society, nothing and no-one is sacred: our celebrity gods have been dragged off their pedestals, and some are a current car crash waiting to happen. Alison discusses and creates a new Amy Winehouse work exclusively for the South Bank Show - a continuing and heady mix of stimulation that results in the images we crave, of the modern icons of celebrity.
Presented and edited by Melvyn Bragg
Executive Producer Matt Cain
Editor Jules Cornell
Directer Alison Jackson
Last edited: Friday, 18 September 2009
