Afternoon & Book Signing with the Artist, December 16, 4 - 5:30 pm

Photographer Duane Michals turns his eye on the legendary artists René Magritte and Andy Warhol in this exhibition of early portraits. Known for his surreal sequences and witty storytelling across media, Michals’s portraits of other artists turn the tables upon his subjects by adopting elements of their characteristic visual styles. Among the many artists photographed by Michals over his six-decade long career, Michals particularly sought out Magritte and Warhol as subjects. The exhibition will feature nearly forty portraits of Warhol and twenty portraits of Magritte, alongside over twenty portraits of other major 20th century artists. These two series reimagine these mythological artists on Michals’s own terms, capturing at once the illusory image of the artist and the person beneath.

Duane Michals first took portraits of Andy Warhol in 1958, and continued to photograph him throughout the artists’ friendship. They met while Warhol was working as a commercial artist and connected over their shared experiences growing up in Pittsburgh. The 1958 portraits capture this moment of transition from working in advertising to establishing himself as Andy Warhol, the artist and personality. The subsequent portraits taken over the years illuminate Warhol’s constant self-reinvention. Michals comments, “he’s transcended being a mere artist, he’s a phenomenon. Andy was phenomenal. And he still is, and he will get stronger as time goes on.”

In August, 1965, Duane Michals arrived at René Magritte’s home in Brussels to take the famous surrealist’s portrait. Michals made the connection through a friend of a friend and had no idea what to expect from the painter who was a large influence on his own photographs. Michals’s photographs refract Magritte and his space through his own engagement with Magritte’s art. He writes, “what so engaged me in Magritte’s work was its ability to perplex. In his world, I could not be sure of anything.” The portraits convey the surrealist sense of humor shared by the two artists, using double exposures and other techniques to perplex the eye. Magritte is dressed in a dark suit and bowler hat, “the familiar Magritte man” of his paintings.