Fame: Andy Warhol in AlUla marks the pop art pioneer's Saudi Arabia debut

Part of AlUla Arts Festival, the exhibition explores the artist’s fascination with celebrity

Warhol's work is being exhibited in Saudi Arabia for the first time. Photo: Arts AlUla / The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

The exhibition features several of the artist's most recognisable works, such as 1966's Silver Balloons, alongside archival material. Photo: Arts AlUla / The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

The show demonstrates the artist's fixation on fame with distinct silkscreen prints of stars including Dolly Parton (1985) left, and Judy Garland (1979). Photo: Arts AlUla / The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Among the most fascinating works being displayed at Maraya, in Saudi Arabia's AlUla, is a self-portrait of Andy Warhol placed over his signature wallpaper design. Photo: Arts AlUla / The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

The exhibition also features one of Warhol's wigs, a testament to his transformation into one of the most famous people on Earth. Photo: Arts AlUla / The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Liz, 1964, an offset lithograph on paper of the actress Liz Taylor. Photo: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Muhammad Ali, 1978, screen print on Strathmore Bristol paper. Photo: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Self-portrait (Fright Wig), 1986, Polaroid Polacolor. Photo: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Princess Caroline of Monaco, 1983, acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen. Photo: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Self-portrait (Fright Wig), 1986, Polaroid Polacolor ER. Photo: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Jackie Onassis, 1964, acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen. Photo: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Marlon Brando, Judy Garland, Muhammad Ali, Dolly Parton — from the celebrities Andy Warhol dreamed of meeting as a child, to the ones who flocked to his Factory studios later in life, the artist maintained a lifelong fixation on fame, capturing his idols in inimitable portraiture.

Whether through the paintbrush, camera or recording studio, it was a force that fuelled his flight from industrial Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and drew creatives of all walks into his orbit, as he transformed himself from a prolific commercial illustrator to the wig-wearing wonder at the heart of 1960s New York art scene.

Today, the journey continues, as Warhol’s work arrives in Saudi Arabia for the first time, inspiring a new audience nearly four decades after his death. Running within the mirrored walls of AlUla’s Maraya until May 16, the Fame: Andy Warhol at AlUla exhibition explores the artist’s lifelong fixation on celebrity, through several of his most recognisable works, alongside rarely seen archival photographs and materials.

Yet this is not a mere time capsule looking back to the heyday of 1960s counter-culture, and the pop art movement. Rather, it is the next step in the journey of Warhol’s legacy — placing his work within a refreshingly novel context and infusing it with new layers of meaning in the modern age of smartphones and social media.

Warhol spent his life captivated by fame, appearance and the art of being seen. The exhibition opens with a series of screen tests, featuring several of his Factory stars, such as Lou Reed and Edie Sedgwick. Photo: Arts AlUla / Andy Warhol Museum

Patrick Moore, exhibition curator and director of the Andy Warhol Museum, says that while Warhol is “predominant in the entire world”, presenting the artist’s work in a new country creates an opportunity for it to be seen in a different light. “It will not be seen in the same way as it would be in New York or London,” Moore adds.

Speaking before a hypnotic backdrop of sandstone mountains, he explains: “We could do a show every year in London. We could do a show every year in New York. But what would we be bringing new to those cultures through doing that here?”

Crucially, Moore says the exhibition has particular relevance to contemporary Saudi Arabia. “I think this contributes to Warhol and his legacy remaining fresh and vital and changing, rather than the work being a kind of mausoleum from the 1960s.

“I came here for the first time in December 2021. I’d never been to Saudi Arabia before and the thing that struck me was the youthful energy of the country — the fact that I'd never really been to a country where I felt that everybody was so young, and the country was changing so quickly.”

He has been particularly fascinated by the country's relationship with social media.

“I think that experience of ‘I want to not only express myself, but to be seen and to be a part of the larger world’ is very similar to Warhol — from the time he was a young boy, growing up in a very gritty industrial city and gazing at stars of the great Hollywood silver screen, to later on when he dabbled in media and created something like Interview magazine.”

Warhol was born in a working-class neighbourhood of Pittsburgh to two immigrants from what is today Eastern Slovakia. Growing up with a neurological disorder called Sydenham chorea in the aftermath of the Great Depression, Hollywood and pop culture became vehicles of escape for a young Warhol. He spent much of his time reading comics and pop culture magazines, writing letters to movie stars asking for headshots and experimenting with paper cutouts and photography.

Patrick Moore, director at The Andy Warhol Museum. Photo: Abby Warhola

After art school, Warhol worked as a commercial illustrator — for clients such as Tiffany & Co, Columbia Records and Vogue — and later funnelled the proceeds into his increasingly experimental and bold artistic career. In the 1960s, his studio, The Factory, became a popular hangout for artists and celebrities, who frequently featured in his work.

The AlUla exhibition presents a broad overview of this relationship with fame. In one darkened corner of Maraya, monitors play a series of Warhol’s “screen tests”, which he produced by simply seating audiences — drawn from The Factory crowd — in front of a Bolex camera at his studio.

“Warhol would walk away for the length of the film, you'd be left there three and a half minutes, confronted with the camera," Moore explains.

“Three and a half minutes, it turns out, is actually quite a long time, so people tended to get a little uncomfortable — they were confronted with themselves and it became another type of portraiture.”

The exhibition features an array of silkscreen prints that Warhol produced of both the celebrities he dreamt of meeting as a child, and those he knew as an adult. Photo: Arts AlUla / The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Within the gallery space is a collection of paintings and silkscreen prints, depicting both the celebrities Warhol dreamt of meeting as a child, such as Garland and Brando, as well as those he did encounter, such as Debbie Harry and Ali.

“We have the canvases, but then we also have the source material for the work,” says Moore. “So in some cases, those are Polaroids that were all shot himself in the studio. And in other cases, for people who were older, like Judy Garland, they were studio publicity stills.”

One of the pieces Moore describes as “very, very special” is a painted self-portrait, which is hung on “Warhol wallpaper”, which the artist created as an environmental backdrop for his work, and the museum has the exclusive right to reproduce.

The exhibition also includes a collection of archival photographs, showing Warhol at work. “We are also including one of Warhol’s wigs, which I think will be fascinating for people, because you can really see how incredible his transformation was, from this rather kind of conservative Brooks Brothers 1950s guy to a work of art himself wearing this crazy wig,” says Moore.

Another curious addition is a collection of Warhol’s Silver Clouds, an immersive installation consisting of a group of metallic balloons, created for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1966. Moore explains: “They're meant to be touched and moved and to float around. They’re filled half with helium and half with oxygen and they have this spacey quality to them because they're made of Mylar, which was actually a brand new material in the '60s.”

Although the quest for fame and a broader desire to be seen is universal, Moore believes the theme is particularly pertinent to Saudi audiences — who are experiencing opportunities to be seen in ways they never have before.

The exhibition Fame: Andy Warhol at AlUla is running at AlUla's Maraya until May 16. Photo: Bloomberg

“I think that is so dramatic here because of the country opening up and because of the opportunities that young people are feeling through things like Vision 2030," Moore adds.

“I'm not an expert on all things in this region, but I think it would be fair to say that 10 years ago, one would not be organising a contemporary art exhibition that features portraits in this country.

“So the idea that there has been that much momentum and change in the culture in a relatively short period of time, I think: ‘Why wouldn't we want to be a part of that progress and a change here that seems so joyful for young people in particular?’”

The exhibition is among the highlights of AlUla Arts Festival, which runs until February 28. It is being accompanied by a special performance at Maraya’s concert hall, where Warhol’s screen tests will be projected onto a large screen, accompanied by music from the Los Angeles band Dean and Britta — who evoke the sound of Warhol’s hugely influential group, The Velvet Underground, within a contemporary context.

“The screen tests, when they're projected, are slowed down slightly, which adds more to this kind of dreamy, revealing quality. They're just exceptionally emotional and beautiful works of art,” says Moore.

Fame will also be supported by a series of workshops and talks, as well as a masterclass in design and screen printing. Moore says the ability to continue adding new contexts and meanings to Warhol’s work demonstrates a level of boundless artistry that very few of his peers ever reached.

“If you think of other very famous pop artists — Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg or James Rosenquist, for example — they were amazing painters who made incredible drawings, but they remained, in their way, traditional artists.

“Warhol was out there saying: ‘I'm going to manage bands, I'm going to create a magazine, I'm going to make a television show for MTV’. And if we think about it, that's actually quite similar to the way that young people live. Because technology and media are so accessible to them, I think they relate to the idea that Warhol was out there just trying new things all the time.

“He never wanted to be pigeonholed, or thought of as ‘that sleepy old painter from the 1960s’. He wanted to remain relevant.”

Fame: Andy Warhol in AlUla runs at Maraya until May 16