Andy Warhol—
From A to B and
Back Again

Nov 12, 2018–Mar 31, 2019

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“I was having so much fun in Paris that I decided it was the place to make the announcement I’d been thinking about making for months: I was going to retire from painting.”

At the height of his popular fame as a painter, Warhol put aside not just painting but also his signature appropriation of mainstream commercial products in favor of underground culture, drawing on many of the Factory habitués for his disparate ventures. He entered into a period of intense productivity, developing projects in new media, video, publishing, music, and fashion, while continually experimenting across media.

Warhol’s “retirement” from painting was a declaration that he would not be bound by the limits of any one artistic medium. Shortly after his announcement in 1965, Warhol dramatized his farewell with an installation of Cow Wallpaper and Silver Clouds—helium-filled Mylar balloons that he described as paintings that could “float away.”

That same year, Warhol premiered the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (EPI), an immersive multimedia environment that combined performance, art, film, and music provided by the Velvet Underground. He also published numerous periodicals, print portfolios, and books. Although he continued to make paintings, he did so by recycling subjects such as his electric chairs, experimenting with different color combinations and surface treatments in order to achieve new optical effects.