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Warhol in the desert: flamboyant art icon pops up in Saudi
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A Saudi man visits an arts exhibition by late US artist Andy Warhol at the Maraya concert hall in the ruins of Al-Ula, a UNESCO World Heritage site in northwestern Saudi Arabia, on February 19, 2023. (AFP/Fayez Nureldine)
A
ndy Warhol's iconic portraits of stars such as Marlon Brando and Dolly Parton are on display in the Saudi desert, at a show intended to reframe the kingdom's forbidding reputation.
The first exhibition in Saudi Arabia for the Pop Art giant is a tribute to the late artist's obsession with celebrity, and his seeming ability to predict the rise of contemporary influencer culture.
At the same time, organisers have tried to draw a connection between the world Warhol embodied –- New York City half a century ago -– and Saudi Arabia today.
"Warhol grew up through a time of radical change in America in the 1950s and 1960s, a time of a completely new vibrant youth culture, and he recorded that and reflected that," said Sumantro Ghose, arts programming director in AlUla, the Saudi town hosting the exhibition.
"Right now in Saudi Arabia, we're in a time of great change, great transformation," he added.
It would be hard to imagine a more unlikely ambassador for the new Saudi Arabia, where a burgeoning arts and music scene exists alongside harsh repression of political speech and the criminalisation of homosexuality.
For one thing, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which collaborated on the exhibition, describes him as a "gay icon".
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