Nasher draws on Warhol star power in 'Big Shots'

People wanting to see Warhol’s actual paintings shouldn’t bother coming to the Nasher’s new exhibition of the artist’s Polaroids. Indeed, what stands out is not the aesthetic quality of the many photographs displayed, but rather the glimpse that they seem to offer into the enigmatic icon’s psyche—or at least his scintillatingly vibrant social life.

The show, titled Big Shots as a shout-out to the style of Polaroid camera that Warhol notoriously toted, presents hundreds of the artist’s snapshots. Often used as studies for his larger paintings, the photographs are most interesting when capturing the numerous poses of a single subject. Displayed in sterile rows, the seemingly identical shots invite a closer inspection, their nearly unremarkable differences inviting the viewer into Warhol’s visual process.

Paired with the paintings of the Nasher family that stand at the exhibition’s entrance, all of which are positioned next to a corresponding Polaroid, the photographic studies work to show the mythic, celebrity status imbued in each Warhol work. The Nasher daughters, though formidable in larger-than-life format and lurid color, look decidedly stripped-down and approachable in Polaroid form.   Which is not to say that the exhibition does not have its share of celebrity shots­—one of the show’s main draws is its ability to elicit surprise flashes of recognition as a young Diane Lane or Carly Simon comes into focus.

What resonates through the exhibition is Warhol’s eye for capturing and reproducing subjects, his Pop Art iterations of the photographs building upon already masterfully positioned reproductions of personalities. The standouts are the subjects that were as charismatic outside of Warhol’s frame as within it. A cuttingly sleek Grace Jones stretches through one of the images, her sharply made-up eye catching viewers as she escapes from the shot in a billow of purple fur. A similarly arresting image shows the tragically short-lived Jean-Michel Basquiat pinned against the photograph’s stark, white backdrop, his eyes sizing up the viewer in a measured gaze.

Also displayed are numerous larger black-and-white photographs, all of which are candid, intimate displays of Warhol’s famously uninhibited social scene. Grayscale figures jump in and out of the frames as the focus snags on the famous or famous-looking, making the photographs look like evidence of epic, bygone parties.

Big Shots opens today at the Nasher Museum of Art. It runs through Feb. 21.