First Frist Friday
A few weeks ago, some friends and I went to Frist Friday- an event held each 1st Friday of the month at a local art museum in downtown Nashville. Embarrassingly enough, this was my first time to go to one of these events…and now I want to become a member. They had bars, a DJ, dance floor, ..and best of all, you get to walk through the exhibit, which happened to be Warhol at the time. It was incredible. Warhol mixed with disco music and wine..what else could you ask for?!
I am pretty familiar with Warhol’s works but had never really been to an exhibit or studied it in great depth (or any depth really…). So seeing all of his epic styles, his pop art, reading quotes from him…it was eye opening. Learning about Studio 54..I wanted to be a part of that era so bad. He described the club as “a dictatorship at the door, a democracy on the floor”. I can just picture the scene now…disco divas lined up at this exclusive joint flirting with the bouncer and praying to get in and when they finally did, once in a blue moon, they’d leave it all out on the dance floor (actually, I feel like I did live that scene a few times when I was under age in college…minus the disco diva part).
One part of the collection that he is probably most famous for is the series of pop icons he photographed. Seeing all of these true idols: Prince, Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, Mick Jagger (who Warhol was known to have a slight obsession with) displayed in various states and always vibrant colors was the epitome of cool. We don’t really think anything of it now, but back then, those bright canvases were truly revolutionary.
If I could say I took one thing away from the exhibit (which obviously I don’t have to just talk about just one thing..that’s the beauty of a blog..duh), it was the art Warhol captured and created through patience. There was a series called “watching” which was literally photographs of different bystanders experiencing different things. You may not know exactly what they are seeing, but their reactions tell stories. And although one of those pictures could be an affective piece of art in itself, it was the combination of all of them together that made the collection so interesting. Patience. There was another collection of videos of people simply sitting, lounging, doing a whole lot of nothing. Sounds boring..but seeing different people’s habits, ticks, people in a state of relaxation..all together was a really cool sight to see. And again, one of those videos might have actually been boring, but the group of them all together was what made them great. That’s patience…something we don’t see a lot of these days. I wish I had an ounce of his patience in me.
