It's been a crazy art week filled with press conferences and constant questions about PAM's new Rothko Pavilion expansion but frankly I'm more interested in looking art. I might even do a few studio visits to get back to the source next week. This weekend has some great opportunities to step out though.


Flash-November 22, 1963 with soup cans and flowers reflected

The big event this weekend is Andy Warhol: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation at the Portland Art Museum. First, this is a full retrospective and I think the breadth of early work like the blotted ink technique shoes to a pop up book and album covers will give a more intimate personal view of an artist that most immediately associate with Soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. Those are present too but the exhibition does a good job of filtering in social concerns, politics and erotica in a way that goes beyond the celebrity obsessions that defined Pop Culture. In particular an entire gallery space devoted to the entire folio called Flash-November 22, 1963 is eye opening. It throws the entire show into a different relief. The folio has rarely been shown and it is a crucial piece of Americana that combines concrete poetry, political idealism and tragedy. I'll have an interview with scholar Richard Axsom published here this weekend where we discuss it and other works in depth. Warhol is a crucial artist and in Portland we so seldom experience well executed retrospectives that seeing this show is mandatory. What is great about Warhol is his art was all about "accessibility" a trend which has come to even further define the 21st century, yet somehow Warhol's work isn't the spent force of yet another meme, they age well. Overall, with Warhol's close knit cadres of filmmakers, fashion designers, actors and musicians Warhol predates many of the concerns of Millennials, long before they came of voting age. I'll be curious to hear how they and those even younger respond? Warhol came from a living practice of an extended artistic family so the way the work lives today essentially creates an indexed benchmark of the American identity... similar to the way the Greek Pantheon galvanized that culture. There will be a variety of events and films as well.

Andy Warhol: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer | October 8, 2016 - January 1, 2017
1st lecture: Collecting Warhol with Richard Axsom and Jordan Schnitzer | October 9, 2-3PM
Film schedule here Beginning October 8th
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Avenue





Damien Gilley is one of Portland's favorite artists and has forged an international career (PORT was the first to review him and last year ended up in the New York Times). His latest called Neverender is a, "colorful installation about sunrise, computers, and soft obliteration."

Neverender | October 7 - 29
Opening: October 7, 7 - 9PM
One Grand Gallery
1000 E Burnside




Often the art world can get stuck within its own little bubble but PNCA's interdisciplinary Potency of Process: Moving Through Breast Cancer symposium brings art and one of my favorite social theorists Ellen Dissanayake into the equation (I studied and lectured extensively on feminist theory in grad school). Dissanayake's key note talk at 3:00PM Saturday alone should be worth it and its all related to the exhibition Potency of Process, also on view.

Potency of Process: Moving Through Breast Cancer | October 8th
1:30PM Presentations from Community Partners
3:00PM Ellen Dissanayake in conversation with Sonja Dahl
PNCA
511 NW Broadway