![]() It marked the first time an American presidential campaign commissioned a famous artist to create a poster, and sales of the poster raised about $40,000 for McGovern. His poster for George McGovern’s campaign, Vote McGovern (1972) is arguably his most legendary presidential portrait. As Warhol established his oeuvre, focusing on the media-as the connection between pop culture and politics-gave Warhol a buffer and allowed him to avoid making explicitly political statements.īy the 1970s, Warhol was finally ready to start making explicitly political statements. He did not paint the Vietnam War, but his film Chelsea Girls includes a monologue parodying the radio reportage of Hanoi Hannah. He did not paint civil rights leaders, but he painted one of the most iconic photographs of police brutalizing demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama. He did not paint President Johnson, but he painted the photograph of Johnson’s chaotic swearing-in ceremony. ![]() However, when Warhol first started to define himself as a Pop artist and experimental filmmaker in the mid-1960s, his work rarely focused on politics so much as media coverage of political issues. Warhol’s literal silence when it comes to Johnson’s presidency may seem puzzling, especially since Johnson held office during such important years in Warhol’s career. Warhol himself contributed eleven seconds of silence. ![]() The album is a radical auditory collage in which songs, poems, chants, and gossip overlap with excerpts from radio coverage of the wedding of Luci Johnson, President Johnson’s youngest daughter. Other contributors included Superstars and friends of the Factory such as Gerard Malanga, Ingrid Superstar, The Velvet Underground, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Ed Sanders. Underground, a 1966 album created by an underground newspaper called The East Village Other. A few years later, Warhol participated in the recording of Electric Newspaper, Hiroshima Day, USA vs. But Johnson’s presence is heavily implied in some of Warhol’s portraits of Jackie Kennedy, in which Warhol appropriated an infamous photograph of the stunned soon-to-be-former First Lady standing next to Johnson on Air Force One as he is sworn in as the country’s thirty-sixth president. Warhol never created a portrait of Lyndon Johnson, unless you count an obscure Polaroid depicting a framed photograph of Johnson behind a white plaster monkey. Kennedy’s smiling face is partially visible in some of Warhol’s Jackie portraits, in which Warhol had appropriated a photograph of the happy couple greeting their supporters in Dallas. ![]() The attractive and dynamic Kennedy that we tend to remember shows up in Warhol’s artworks from later in the decade. In his book Popism (1980), Warhol remarked, “I’d been thrilled having Kennedy as president he was handsome, young, smart…” yet in this drawing Kennedy appears sweaty and tired after a “tough day” of cabinet meetings shortly after his inauguration. Warhol’s first-known rendering of JFK appears as a rough sketch in one of his early drawings of a newspaper front page, Pirates Sieze Ship (1961). In examining his portraits of presidents and his interactions with First Families from the Kennedy administration to the Reagan administration, we can see both Warhol’s growing willingness to delve into the realm of politics and Warhol’s increasing acceptance by the political elite. By the end of his life, Warhol had visited the White House on at least five occasions, at the request of three different presidents. Although often characterized as an apolitical artist, Andy Warhol began making portraits of political figures early in his career. ![]()
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