Campbell's Soup and actress Elizabeth Taylor didn't have a lot in common until artist Andy Warhol turned images of each into iconic pieces of pop art. This month, the Massillon Museum looks at how instant photography played into Warhol's artistic process with its newest exhibit, Snap! In the Photobooth with Andy Warhol and Friends.
"Warhol used photo booth strips and Polaroids as source material for his silk-screens or other printed and painted work," explains Massillon Museum executive director Alexandra Nicholis Coon. "Visitors can see a few examples of original photo booth strips, and the works they inspired."
For the exhibit, which opens June 22 and runs through Oct. 13, Nicholis Coon selected photos of Warhol's family and friends, including model and actress Edie Sedgwick and cabaret singer and pianist Bobby Short, along with some of Warhol's self-portraits.
Many of his photographs were taken in a photochemical photo booth like the one that the Massillon Museum is providing for visitors to experience themselves at $4 per photo strip. More famous Warhol works such as silk-screened images of Elizabeth Taylor and Mick Jagger will be on display as well.
Original Warhol works included in the exhibit are on loan from several institutions, including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Canton Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown and Kent State University.
"The collection constitutes a document of how Warhol valued encapsulating time," Nicholis Coon says, "and certain time periods of his life."
