Page 20 - Studio International - February 1971

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perception of the cycle of change of light from
dawn to dusk and back into night's darkness.
These paintings deal with the play of natural
light and reveal changes in its quality, especially
temperature and colouration, as reflected off the
cathedral's façade—but in a sequential manner
according to the degree of light given off by the
earth's position in relation to the sun within a
cycle of one day. Monet creates a complex
metaphor of man's awareness of the passage of
time, of the cosmic forces at play through the
earth's rotation and the burning sun's
irradiation. Monet's vision is one of singular
grace, expressed without any edge of existential
anxiety, or even hint of the destructive forces at
play in the world.
The imagery of Elvis, on the other hand, for
all its representation of the figure of the wild and
woolly west, is patently a figment of
Hollywood's imagination and, as such, is
equally a product of the technology that sired
the film medium and its heroes. Light-borne
images are hardly new, as the stained-glass
windows within the façade of Monet's cathedral
attest. However, the light source that is a
preponderant factor in creating this particular
image of Elvis is as synthetic as the medium
itself, which is as much the product of chemical,
mechanical and optical engineering as of
electricity. Warhol's imagery is the reflection of
a reflection bridged by technology: from the
actor in his role via the camera to the movie film,
transferred to a still photograph, reproduced by
photomechanical enlargement on to the
silkscreen, and thence to the final act of
painting the image on to a silver canvas.
The image is devastatingly banal and
uncharacteristic of Presley. It is not Elvis
Presley the Rock-and-Roll performer—Elvis
gyrating with his guitar—but Presley the actor
pointing a threatening gun to the viewer's head
and parodying a cowboy masculinity and
sensuous femininity of face unrepresentative of
him in real life, or as a singer. Yet when the
paintings are continuously strung along a wall
space, the pervasively rhythmic repetition of the
imagery becomes a metaphor of Rock and Roll's
powerful incessant beat, the fragmented
overprinted images suggesting optical
after-images caused by stroboscopic light. The
variation in the printing of the figures positively
2 Andy Warhol positioned, but the changes in the width of the enhances this feeling of movement, which is
Installation shot, Ferus Gallery,
October 1963 individual canvases combined with positional reinforced finally by the lateral spread of the
and tonal distinctions permit singularity yet repetitive imagery on the continuous silver
3 Andy Warhol
Installation shot, Ferus Gallery, enforce an organic reading of the whole. When background.
October 1963 all the paintings are strung out in a single space, But the most insistent question posed by the
Photo: Frank J. Thomas, Los Angeles the series becomes like a musical mural, so to Elvis series concerns the nature of their
4 Andy Warhol speak; as the eye of the viewer travels from specifically charged content, and the viewing of
Cagney 1963 canvas to canvas, each is linked to the whole by Warhol's imagery not as signs, but as icons
Silkscreen, 30 x 4o in.
Coll: Ben Berillo a continuity of the rhythmic beat of the figure dealing with a larger content of culture in
Courtesy Leo Castelli, New York against the continuous silver ground. In short, America. To a large group of Americans Presley
and Mayfair Fine Art, London there is a lateral spread of time and motion. The has long been a folk hero, yet his musical
Photo : Rudolph Burckhardt, New York
rhythm can be scanned at any point; there is no impact has overshadowed his sociological
beginning or end, nor any hierarchy of position. significance. Presley's importance is not simply
Claude Monet, the first serial innovator, as a popular entertainer but as a bearer of new
captured in 1894 in his series of paintings of the verities. Both Eldridge Cleaver and Jerry
immobile façade of Rouen Cathedral, his Rubin, two of the most radical figures to have

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