Unidentified Man (Thick Black Hair) 1980

This is Andy Warhol’s “Unidentified Man (Thick Black Hair),” a Polaroid print, and when you look at it, you’re seeing the world through Warhol’s eyes, a world obsessed with celebrity and surface. The material quality here is so telling. It's just a small polaroid, an everyday snapshot of the everyday, blown up by Warhol's vision. The colors are almost lurid, that sickly yellow background, and the way the black suit just absorbs all light. It's like he's trying to make a nobody into a somebody, but the flatness of the image kind of does the opposite, flattening out any depth. It reminds me of Alex Katz in a way, both obsessed with the surface of things, but Warhol's got this creepy edge, right? Art’s not about answers; it’s about the questions it makes you ask.