About Face: Andy Warhol Portraits

The most widely admired paintings by Andy Warhol - and the most reviled - are his portraits. About Face, which accompanies an exhibition organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum, presents the first overview of Warhol's portraiture to embrace all periods and media. About face refers both to Warhol's fascination with images of the human face and to his characteristic method of reversal. For example, Warhol reverses the portraitist's goal to capture the essence of a subject's individuality in his factory production of Warhol portraits. His portraits are about the creation of faces (as the public masks onto which identity is projected) rather than the revealing of a true self. Warhol's portraits, which reveal the artificial aspects of public identity, intitiate a democracy of fame and beauty, where everyone has superstar potential.