Filed under: Collecting, DC, Q&A | Tags: Andy Warhol, Arlington Arts Center, Collecting, Corcoran, Corcoran Gallery of Art, DC, Erika Ranee, Faith Ringgold, Henry L. Thaggert, Jefferson Pinder, KARA WALKER, Lauren Woods, Matthew Smith, Maya Freelon Asante, Nadine Robinson, Nekisha Durrett, Philips Collection, Renee Cox, Renee Stout, Warhol, Washington Project for the Arts
Andy Warhol’s relationship to abstraction is charged. Despite a late-career painterlyimpulse — which included the Shadows series currently exhibiting at the Hirshhorn — his pictorial language based on representation fundamentally questioned the narrative of post-war painting as defined by Clement Greenberg. And the implications of Pop Art’s emergence over Abstract Expressionism were significant, not least for black artists as changes in collecting preferences opened new doors for art about the African American experience. This was the premise of a talk by art collector Henry Thaggert at the Philips Collection in Washington D.C. a few years back. It’s a perspective that Kara Walker seems to echo, at least indirectly, in a talk on Andy Warhol scheduled for next week at the Hirshhorn. I recently caught up with Thaggert to talk further about Warhol, get his thoughts on collecting art, and about his involvement in the local art scene. - Matthew Smith, D.C. Contributor
