It’s hard to imagine how startling Andy Warhol’s flower paintings must have been in 1964.
In the nearly half-century since, the artist’s manipulated, pop-influenced imagery has been absorbed into our mass visual lexicon, inescapably shaping our perceptions of the world.
But when the “Flowers” series debuted at Warhol’s first solo exhibition at New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery, Photoshop was decades in the future and photocopiers were just beginning to spread through American offices.
It’s not surprising that these now-iconic images, along with the artist’s “Jackie” and “Marilyn” paintings created in that same year, created something of a sensation.
In a crowd-pleasing exhibition titled “Warhol’s Flowers,” the Colorado State University Art Museum is presenting a set of 10 screenprints based on the paintings.
The suite, on loan from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, is one of several similar portfolios the artist published in the early 1970s.
To understand the radicalism of these pieces when they were introduced, it is important to remember that even the era’s most avant-garde art, like Robert Rauschenberg’s combines, retained a handmade look.
But by altering an appropriated flower image from an issue of Modern Photography and then repeating the same cropped composition with alterations in color and tone, Warhol effected an unexpectedly manufactured, extracted look.
By later adapting the paintings to screenprints and taking advantage of fluorescent pigments newly developed by Day-Glo Corp., Warhol was able to further enhance the machined look of these images.
Because the artist was always inspired by mass production, it is not too much of a stretch even to compare these programmed iterations to the multiple color options that manufacturers offer for fabric or floor-covering designs.
By draining the original photograph of details and slightly manipulating its elements, Warhol turned the floral image into what was more a pattern than a detailed composition.
He then employed assorted combinations of purple, fuchsia, yellow, orange and green, offsetting them at times with a black-and-white background, to create a surprisingly diverse range of moods and effects.
What resulted were bold, eye-pleasing and instantly digestible images — the perfect artworks for an increasingly fast-moving, mass-media society.
The University Art Museum has hung the 10 pieces in a gallery with pink and black walls. These are hardly typical colors for displaying art, but they work in this case, especially with the black making these bright images pop.
The novelty of Warhol’s “Flowers” took the art world by storm when they were unveiled, and more than four decades later, they still exude an appealing, contemporary freshness.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan @denverpost.com
Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program in Colorado
Colorado State University Art Museum
Donation: 157 images
Exhibition: Through Sept. 25
University of Colorado Art Museum
Donation: 156 images
Expected exhibition: Fall 2010
University of Denver’s Myhren Gallery
Donation: 158 images
Expected exhibition: January 2011
