Andy Warhol’s iconic portraits of stars such as Marlon Brando and Dolly Parton are on display in the Saudi desert, at a show intended to reframe the kingdom’s forbidding reputation.
AL-ULA, Saudi Arabia –
“Warhol grew up through a time of radical change in America in the 1950s and 1960s, a time of a completely new vibrant youth culture, and he recorded that and reflected that,” said Sumantro Ghose, arts programming director in Al-Ula, the Saudi town hosting the exhibition.It would be hard to imagine a more unlikely ambassador for the new Saudi Arabia, where a burgeoning arts and music scene exists alongside harsh repression of political speech and the criminalization of homosexuality.
But Warhol, who died in 1987, would likely have relished the chance to show his work in Saudi Arabia and engage with its contradictions, said Warhol Museum director Patrick Moore. Housed in Al-Ula’s Maraya, a mirror-encased concert hall flanked by sandstone mountains, the tightly-edited exhibition lays out some of the more glamourous highlights from the Warhol catalogue in three main rooms.“Factory” studio: a pensive Edie Sedgwick, a brooding Dennis Hopper and Lou Reed sipping a soft drink.
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