ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - Andy Warhol was an early adopter of selfies, if a new exhibit showcasing his work is any indication.
The iconic pop artist’s work is showcased in a large new exhibit at The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., and it includes paintings, drawings and yes, self-portraits - taken with the Instagram of the 1970s, Polaroid.
There’s Warhol posing with a skull, Warhol looking moody in black and white and Warhol wedged in between John Lennon and Yoko Ono (bonus points: celebrity selfie!).
And despite the 1970s clothing and Studio 54-era glitter of the art and photographs, the exhibit feels fresh. Warhol’s vision of pop culture and fame fits right in with America’s 21st century love of the Kardashians and TMZ.com.
The exhibit of more than 100 works and some films opens to the public Saturday and runs through April 27. The works are on loan from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, where Warhol was born and raised before moving to New York City.
It’s a first for The Dali, which is an entire museum devoted to the surrealist master’s work.
Museum executive director Hank Hine said during a media tour Wednesday that the exhibit - called “Warhol: Art. Fame. Mortality.” - is the first large-scale special exhibit for the museum since it moved into a stunning new building along St. Petersburg’s waterfront in 2011.
“This is totally appropriate to the legacy of Dali,” said Hine.
The exhibit showcases some of Warhol’s famous silkscreens, including a red self-portrait taken a year before he died. There’s also several panels of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and a few quirky versions of his Campbell’s soup cans. There are also TV monitors set up to show the artist’s “screen tests,” short films of a single person against a plain background.
Dali and Warhol had much in common, Hine said, and the exhibit contains two photos of the men goofing around in a hotel room together.
Dali was a generation older - born in 1904 - than Warhol, who was born in 1928, but both captivated the public with their attention-getting and sometimes controversial works of art.
Warhol often visited Dali when Dali stayed in a suite at the St. Regis Hotel in New York (one story goes that Dali tied Warhol to a spinning board and splattered paint over him). Warhol also made one of his famous “screen tests” of Dali, and like the others filmed, Warhol told Dali not to move during the three-minute filming.
Dali ignored Warhol’s instruction to sit still and left the frame.
The exhibit not only shows Warhol’s screen tests, but offers viewers to do their own.
The show has a replica of his screen test set where visitors can sit in front of a camera and then send their “tests” to Twitter and Facebook - allowing everyone their ubiquitous 15 minutes of fame on social media.
Warhol would have approved.
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