Edna R. Weissman 1977

Curator: Here we have Andy Warhol's Polaroid photograph of Edna R. Weissman, created in 1977. Editor: She has such striking eyes! And she’s definitely got “secrets” written all over her face. The pose feels almost like she was interrupted, turning back with a slightly startled expression. Curator: That interruption, that instantaneousness, is part of the point, isn't it? The Polaroid was Warhol's favored tool to rapidly churn out images for paintings and prints. It’s about mass production, even within portraiture. He leveraged its instant nature to collapse the boundaries between original artwork and commercial product. Editor: Right. No long hours of sitting for her. I bet she’s fascinating in real life. I bet Andy was tickled with her hair. Look at the color fields he put in, they remind me of early color film processing – a certain waxy luminescence on her skin that brings a kind of melancholy. Curator: Note, too, the social context. Weissman was not just some random person, but one of the monied class who formed Warhol's patronage network, those willing to participate in and fund the pop art machine. It brings a sense of pre-social media image-obsessed society that rings familiar in our own time, I feel. Editor: Very much. It’s a kind of pre-cursor to selfies, don’t you think? You’re buying the image. You are, as subject and client, creating something new about yourself. Looking again I do find it difficult not to be impressed by Warhol's command over colour, and also his almost unnerving grasp of our image-obsessed culture, how everything, even us, is manufactured, for better or worse. Curator: A dark optimism, maybe? So even at a distance it makes you think about the image and art of the now. Editor: And consider your own motives in even stopping and taking a look. A fine end note!