When Amber Morgan was working for Michael Berger Gallery in the South Side, the gallerist told her he sold prints because it was “art people could live with.” She carried that interest in prints with her both personally and professionally, buying them for her own home from local Pittsburgh artists. Now, as Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Andy Warhol Museum, Morgan is at the helm of Good Business, a show focusing on Warhol’s screen-printing practice.
The title comes from one of Warhol’s aphorisms: “Business is art, and working is art, and good business is the best kind of art.” Where the show is at its best is when it asks questions about how and why the “working” part of an artist’s life is often outside of the spotlight. Artists, like everyone else, have to make money. And though Warhol loved celebrity and glamor, he did not come from generational wealth. Warhol could produce screenprints faster than original compositions and sell them more prolifically to more people.
Good Business at the Warhol Explores Printing and Profit
A video in the space shows a Warhol Museum staff member creating a screenprint, visualizing the process for guests. The video also serves as a meta-narrative for the show. The staff member making the screenprint is himself a working artist. New Executive Director Mario Rossero, who started his career at the museum as one of the hands on Arts Educators in the ‘90s, is also a working artist.
Often, discussion of side hustles and finances are a taboo among artists. A solid takeaway from Good Business would be to recognize that anyone, from your server to your babysitter to, yes, even staff at any museum, could also be an artist making ends meet and engaging in the art of “good business.”
“I’m excited for this exhibition to show the work that the education department does,” Morgan said. It was only a coincidence that this exhibition coincided with Rossero’s appointment. But the coincidence allows the museum to further showcase some of the work that happens in its basement where the Arts Educator team teaches screen-printing.
The “Good Business” of Philanthropy
One highlight of Morgan’s curation is a room about how Warhol spent his money once he had it. The space showcases screenprint posters he made for friends and charitable causes. For a lavish party thrown by George Plimpton of The Paris Review, Warhol made a poster using a receipt from the liquor store around the corner. The receipt advertised to guests that there would be copious vodka.
Warhol also made vibrant and whimsical screen-prints of endangered species to raise awareness about that cause. Though he was private about his own politics, he made a screen-print of Jimmy Carter during his candidacy. (Warhol was not close with the man himself but became friendly with his mother).
Good Business shows the balancing act of a single-artist museum. Morgan said that “We had to have the soup cans, the celebrities, the cows.” But in Good Business, the museum revealed some of the original images Warhol printed off of as well. Visitors can see the Polaroid of the cow that graces the Warhol’s wall. “Pop art is really easy to talk about. That’s one of its biggest strengths,” Morgan said. “You can look at the can of soup and have an easy in—‘I’ve had soup before’ and so on.” When people walk into the main floor of a museum about Andy Warhol, they want to recognize Warhol’s work the first moment they see it. So, Morgan had to balance that with the more esoteric archival items she found. “People love the portraiture, but it’s an opportunity to build context for it,” she said.
A More Accessible Way for Artwork to Travel
Morgan called Warhol the “quintessential American artist.” She hopes that this exhibition helps people learn more about the man behind the pop art. “Warhol’s screen-printing was tied to his interest in the mechanical,” she said. “But, ironically, his prints also look very natural and hand-drawn.” A series of screen-prints of lemons shows the different layers that happen during the screen-printing process. You can also see where Warhol made changes and emphasized deviations from print to print.
Warhol’s characteristic cheekiness is in the process, too. “There isn’t a final number of prints in each portfolio,” Morgan explained. So, someone can’t ever collect a “finished” portfolio of Warhol’s screenprints, and two people could own the same portfolio but with different colors.
“One of the goals for this exhibition is for it to travel, too,” Morgan said. “We want it to travel specifically to smaller regional domestic venues who’ve wanted to do a Warhol show, but the insurance can be cost prohibitive.” Since prints are smaller, they are much easier and less expensive for museums to ship. In this way, the Warhol is doing its own type of “good business” to introduce more people to the artist’s work. All of us have to do our own version of “good business,” deciding how much our time is worth, what to spend what we earn on, and where the balance between business and pleasure lays. Good Business is open through September, and it’s worth spending some of your own time with the exhibit.
Story by Emma Riva
Cover image Andy Warhol, $ (1), 1982, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum.
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