The Warhol Look

Rating:
Summary: a wonderful book for all Warhol fans.
Review: This beautifully illustrated book was issued to accompany the 1998/99 major travelling exhibition of the same name.

It focuses on some of the different stages of Warhol's career starting with his fashion illustrations and shop window-dressing from the fifties and early sixties. It then goes on to the 'Factory' style of the sixties and the nightclub and celebrity scenes of the seventies and eighties.

'The Warhol Look' is packed full of wonderful images and photographs, not just by Warhol but also by other artists, designers and photographers. This is especially true of the middles section Covering the sixties. Many forgotten images and magazine spreads are illustrated, providing extra clues as to how mainstream culture viewed Warhol and his associates.

Perhaps the most illuminating parts of the book are devoted to Warhol's fascination with transvestites and Warhol's side line of modelling. The essays accompanying the latter especially provides a fresh insight into Warhol the man and Warhol as a mirror.

The book provides yet more conclusive proof of Warhol's influence on mainstream fashion, art, design, and even, with 'interview' magazine publishing. It examines his links with the downtown avant-garde and underground scenes of the sixties and his distancing from it after his shooting in 1968. It then illustrates his growing obsession with celebrity and fame in the seventies and eighties.

Overall, this is a wonderful book for all Warhol fans, and for anyone interested in fashion, design and the various New York downtown scenes in between 1950's and the 1980's.