Two sides of life

Published Dec. 17, 2009 at 3:36 p.m.
Photographs by Andy Warhol and Stewart Martin
..."I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist," the Pop artist Andy Warhol wrote in 1975. "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."...

ON THE ROAD Martin’s Vermont Bus View Rt 30-VT.

"I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist," the Pop artist Andy Warhol wrote in 1975. "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

Warhol (1928-1987) was a hit advertising illustrator in the 1950s and then became one of the most influential fine artists of the century with his iconic '60s paintings of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. In the '70s, he focused on making money by painting portraits of the rich, famous, and powerful. He turned himself into a disco-era John Singer Sargent, averaging 50 to 100 commissions a year.

VIEW: Photos of “Andy Warhol: A Recent Acquisition Exhibition” at Bannister AND Photos of Stewart Martin’s “Personal Favorites 1975-2007” at AS220

The beginnings of each portrait were Polaroid snapshots, a selection of which is on view in "Andy Warhol: A Recent Acquisition Exhibition" at Rhode Island College's Bannister Gallery (600 Mount Pleasant Avenue, Providence, through January 8). The 49 photos come from a gift of 159 photos that Warhol Foundation donated to the school last year as part of the foundation's "Photographic Legacy" project, which gave Warhol photos to 183 educational institutions across the country, including the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University.

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