AMSTERDAM, March 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — The Modern Contemporary – aka, Moco Museum will open its doors to the public at the end of March. The opening exhibition will combine works of art by Pop Art-protagonist Andy Warhol and Street Art-legend Banksy. The new museum for modern and contemporary art located on the Museum Square in Amsterdam wants…
Beanfield
Satire, a critical note on society, political comments and a dark sense of humour are the common characteristics of a typical Banksy and the LionelGallery have a wide selection of Bansky prints available for sale that reflect these traits. Beanfield is named after the incident, many called it a battle, that took place over 30 years ago. It was a clash between a group of about 600 new age travellers who’d made camp on fields about seven miles from Stone Henge and thousands of police. The Authorities were not happy that there might be another festival at the site and had obtained a High Court injunction preventing the gathering from taking place. The confrontation that followed lead to the the largest mass arrest of civilians since the Second World War with eight police officers and 16 travellers hospitalised.
Banksy’s image is heavily ironic depicting five police officers in heavy battle dress, skipping through a green scene happily scattering wild flowers. It isn’t so blunt as to show what many thought was the unjustified and disproportionate response of the police to a much smaller number of deliberate trouble causers. Instead Banksy uses a favourite ploy, the juxtaposition of peaceful, innocence mixed with the frightening image of brute force.
Marilyn
The Marilyn canvases were early examples of Warhol’s use of silkscreen printing, a method the artist experimented with, recalling:
In August 62 I started doing silkscreens. I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly line effect. With silkscreening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. When Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face the first Marilyns.
On the occasion of Marilyn Monroe’s suicide in August 1962, Warhol used this image for his screenprinting. It was a publicity shot by Gene Korman for the film Niagara, made in 1953.