An exhibition of music: Andy Warhol Live

The exhibit closes with a black and dark gold homage to the days of Studio 54, and is a portrait gallery for some of the celebrities that could be found at any given time in the infamous New York nightclub. Only Warhol could straddle the opposing worlds of Punk and Disco with such ease and delight. Martha Graham, Prince, Truman Capote, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Grace Jones, Jackie Collins, Dolly Parton, Debbie Harry, Liza Minelli and others have their portraits hung in this gallery; this is a slice-of-life of the opulence and decadence of the 1980s, and reminiscent of George Orwell’s Big Brother, the ever-present artist himself is represented on the far wall; the largest portrait in the room is another of Warhol’s self-portraits. He is older, wearing his infamous shock-white wig, gaunt and staring back at the room, into the eyes of the watcher and back over the whole of the exhibit, which serves to sum up his love of music and its influence on his art.

Today, there are faux-Warhol prints of such pop-culture parasites as Paris Hilton or even LOLCatz, the Simpsons and the Sopranos. “Fifteen minutes of fame” has become part of our vernacular and there are dozens of pretenders to the throne of the King of Pop Art.

But no one since has had the kind of subtle and overt influence over our culture that Andy Warhol had-and still has. He has influenced the creative media at all levels, including the Internet, which is surprising, considering that at the time of his death in 1987 very few people even had the remotest idea of what the internet was, or what home computers would do for culture and especially popular culture and our collective conscious in the decades ahead.

Now that I have a better understanding of Warhol’s art, at least from where I started, I do think that he was wrong about the 15 minutes of fame. Some, it seems, are destined for far more than just fifteen minutes; Warhol is most definitely among them.

If you care enough to open your eyes to the importance that music had on Andy Warhol-or the influence that Warhol had on music (The Velvet Underground practically invented Acid Rock), you should check out the “Warhol Live” exhibit. It runs until January 18th at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and then it will move on to San Francisco, in February, until May. If you’re planning a trip to either city during those periods, you owe it to yourself to check out Warhol Live.