Celebrating the Sights and Sounds of Andy Warhol—San Francisco's de Young Museum Brings the Artist's Musical Vision to Life with Meyer Sound
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The Warhol Live exhibition, now at San Francisco's de Young Museum, offers a wide-ranging retrospective into Andy Warhol's use of music in his works. Through a low-profile yet powerful audio system supplied by Meyer Sound, Warhol's iconic creations are brought to life, from portraits of pop stars and album art to his prolific and controversial films and influential New York Silver Factory scene. The late 1960s marked the dawn of the age of multimedia, with music and visual arts forging a new and powerful alliance. And few visual artists embraced music as fully and deeply as Andy Warhol, whose forays into album cover design, music production, film, and performance art served to blur the boundaries between music and art as never before. Acclaimed sound designer Philippe Wojtowicz, who implemented the sound system for the John Lennon, Unfinished Music exhibit in Paris in 2006, was charged to create the aural experience for the event. As Wojtowicz explains, the expansive range of the artist's material called for a multitude of different approaches in sound design. "For some exhibits, we wanted to localize the sound source to a visual element," says Wojtowicz. "For example, having Marilyn Monroe's voice coming from her portrait. In other cases, we wanted to create an ambient atmosphere that really reflected the particular era and environment, like his famous Silver Factory. Many times it was a combination of both these elements. The small size of the MM-4XP miniature loudspeaker allowed us to place both localized and ambient sources in the appropriate locations, without visually distracting from the exhibition's focal points. And its self-powered design eliminates the need to create a space for amplifiers." The sound system includes more than 40 self-powered MM-4XP miniature loudspeakers to provide the soundtrack for the show's many exhibits, which range from smaller, single-loudspeaker kiosks to multichannel environments utilizing UMS-1P subwoofers to reinforce low-frequency content. A few of the larger, rock-influenced exhibits, including the Exploding Plastic Inevitable and Studio 54 areas, employ the UPM-1P loudspeakers with UMS-1P subwoofers to deliver the powerful music of the Velvet Underground, David Bowie, and others. The Warhol Live exhibition was moved to San Francisco following its successful debut at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). Andrew Hope of Canada company Gerr Audio worked with both the MMFA and de Young to adapt Wojtowicz's vision to each museum's particular space. "The MM-4XP is particularly well-suited for this exhibition," says Hope. "As with most museum environments, there's not a lot of separation between exhibits, and the MM-4XP's very tight focus helps to minimize sound leakage between the different areas." Wojtowicz points to the dependability of Meyer Sound loudspeakers as another critical factor. "I've worked with Meyer Sound speakers for many years, and particularly the MM-4XP, which I've used for several exhibitions in Paris," he says. "Besides sounding great and being exceptionally discreet, they can meet the need to run for ten hours per day, six days per week, without a problem." Berkeley, Calif.-headquartered Meyer Sound has long supported art programs both locally and abroad, and finds it especially gratifying to be involved in Warhol Live. "The appeal of Andy Warhol art is undeniable," says Helen Meyer, executive vice president of the company. "With this event taking place in the culturally rich Bay Area, we're compelled to support this meaningful project which allows us to rediscover the artist's creations so ingrained in our culture." The exhibition is curated by Stéphane Aquin, curator of contemporary art at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, along with Emma Lavigne, curator at the Musée national d'art moderne/CCI, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Matt Wrbican, archivist at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. The exhibition's film and video programming was overseen by Greg Pierce, assistant curator at The Andy Warhol Museum, and Timothy Anglin Burgard, the Ednah Root Curator-in-Charge of American Art, is the presenting curator at the de Young. Curator Stéphane Aquin has also edited an illustrated catalogue, Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work, which includes essays by several prominent scholars and interviews with people involved in Warhol's life and work. A catalogue of the many album covers designed by the artist, Andy Warhol: The Record Covers 1949-1987, by Paul Maréchal, also accompanies the exhibition. Warhol Live opens at the de Young museum in San Francisco on February 14 through May 17. More information can be found by visiting: www.famsf.org March, 2009 |
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