Elvis (Eleven Times)
Many of Warhol's most famous paintings take images of celebrities from popular media as their source. Elvis is based upon a publicity still made for the 1960 film Flaming Star. Elvis in cowboy garb, pointing a gun instead of swinging a guitar, embodies two American icons: the bad-boy star and the stereotypical cowboy. The life-size image is printed numerous times on a background covered with silver paint, suggesting both the repetition of film frames and Hollywood's silver screen.
Point of View by Christiane Leach, artist and musician
"Elvis, he is the king. He is blue suede shoes and hound dog blues making those who’ve seen him eager to love him tender. He’s rag to riches, the boy next door, a sellable synthesis of black culture in white skin (like Madonna) making millions. In some communities he is considered a thief of black music and expression, but to most, ignorant of America’s musical history, he is America’s dreamboat. So as he points his gun at us, looking too sexy to shoot, one’s got to ask, is appropriation, if well executed, still a form of economic exploitation, or is it just a new life form created from the mutation of two cultures?"
Point of View by David McCarthy, Associate Professor of Art History
Rhodes College, Memphis
"It may be true that a mirror never lies, but does it necessarily tell the truth? Andy Warhol’s art is often described as a mirror of its time, and it is undeniable that his images, particularly those from the 1960s, rank among the defining documents from that decade. However, the silk screens of Elvis Presley should prompt us to reflect on their accuracy. By eliminating all vestiges of time or place, the repetitions of Elvis take him out of the past, where the cowboy myth originated, and even out of the west, where the figure resides in popular imagination, and returns it to the privacy of one individual acting out before a mirror. In this context the mirror stands as mute witness to the human capacity to invent, to make up, and to play, that is to occupy a role, even if the performance lasts for only a moment and is staged for an audience of one. Seen in this light, Warhol’s mirror may only reflect the instability of identity, and in such mutability may suggest that all the world is indeed a stage."
Point of View by Rabbi Mark N. Staitman, Rodef Shalom Congregation
"In Prayer, I speak to God. In study, God speaks to me. Judaism is a religion of text. We see Torah as a gift of God. The first century rabbi ben Bag Bag said, “Turn it and turn it, for everything of value is in it.” For 2000 years we have studied Torah, looking for Gods word to us. It is not uncommon that Torah seemingly repeats itself. Often the seeming repetition has a slight variation, but always a variation in context. While some may see this as redundancy, Judaism sees each statement as having different meaning.
God would not be redundant. The task of the student of Torah is to find the distinct meaning in each variation of the text. Though each image in the painting starts with the same picture, each can be seen to have a different meaning, each meaning to contribute to a whole; meanings and meaning which, we the viewers, the generations, discover within."
Andy Warhol, photo Greg Gorman, 1983
