Photo Credit: Courtesy Hedges Projects, Los Angeles. Copyright The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Andy Warhol fans, get ready to head to L.A.! The largest collection of privately-owned Andy Warhol images, courtesy of the James R. Hedges IV Collection of Andy Warhol Photography, is heading to Hotel Bel-Air next month.
Photo Credit: Courtesy Hedges Projects, Los Angeles. Copyright The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
A prolific collector since Warhol’s death in 1987, Hedges has acquired an awesome, never-before-seen collection of Warhol’s photos, including hundreds of Polaroids, photo booth strips, screen tests, silver gelatin prints and more.
Photo Credit: Courtesy Hedges Projects, Los Angeles. Copyright The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
All Andy Warhol photos on display at Hotel Bel-Air were taken by the artist in the last decade of his life and include celebrity portraits, Hollywood stars, Studio 54 moments and still life photos. The images were acquired either from Warhol’s Estate and Foundation or from members of the artist’s inner circle of confidants and collaborators, such as The Andy Warhol Diaries Editor, Pat Hackett.
Photo Credit: Courtesy Hedges Projects, Los Angeles. Copyright The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Warhol was a life-long advocate of photography. As a child in Pittsburgh, the young artist had a dark room in his family’s home basement and carried a camera with him, known as “his date,” throughout most of his entire adult life. For the artist, photography was a tool to document his own life, that of his friends and associates, and ultimately as a critical element used to create the majority of his artwork. Initially in the 1950’s, he used a hand-held Polaroid camera to memorialize his friends and social outings, but began experimenting with film in the 1960’s, creating 16mm short portraits he called “screen-tests.” Later, his work included long-format, conceptually-driven narrative feature films including titles such as “Heat,” “Bad,” “Empire,” and “Sleep.” In the latter 1960’s, he would take friends, art patrons, gallery owners and complete strangers to
Times Square for Photo Booth portraits. While Warhol used the Polaroid camera throughout his career, it became the primary tool from which
he created prints and paintings for the last ten years of his life. During that same period, he used a 35 mm camera daily and took over 100,000 photos but printed only a fraction of those.
Photo Credit: Hotel Bel-Air
In addition to the Warhol exhibit, the haute hotel will showcase images courtesy of Maripol, an artist, film producer, fashion designer and stylist who influenced the looks of celebrities like Madonna and Grace Jones. Seven of her most notable images will be on display.
The exhibitions are complimentary and open to the public February 14- April 14, 7 days a week. All photos are available for purchase through the hotel’s concierge.
