MOCA’s Fame Game

Consider it the culture of celebrity’s high-water mark. In a dazzling triumph for the self-promotion that was the benchmark of his career, Andy Warhol, champion of two- dimensional hero worship, has extended his 15 minutes of fame to, if not Elvis-level immortality, then at least Monroe-level longevity. And it is fitting that the Warhol retrospective opening Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art says as much about economics as art.

Not long ago, “commercial art” was a contradiction in terms. Museums had a wall to separate artistic from financial concerns. Then Warhol grabbed attention by putting Coca-Cola bottles and boxes of Brillo pads on canvas, subverting the line between art and commerce.

Since then, the costs of insurance, transportation and installation have battered down the walls meant to keep museums artistically pure. One result: At MOCA’s gift shop, $47 buys a Campbell’s soup can tote bag that imitates a Warhol painting of a Campbell’s tomato soup can that was inspired by a bona fide Campbell’s soup can of the sort one can purchase at Albertsons for 89 cents--filled with tomato soup.

The MOCA show, the first major retrospective of Warhol’s work since a 1989 installation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, clearly hopes to repeat the success of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs: Masterpieces From the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.” To that end, MOCA has teamed up with the city, the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, corporate sponsors and private donors to launch a marketing blitz of banners, billboards, hotel packages, poster giveaways and contests offering free trips to L.A.

The Warhol retrospective is a daring test for MOCA and its newly created team, the sort of experiment in survival that museums can no longer afford to disdain.

With more than 250 works created by the artist over almost 50 years, the exhibit has the potential to expose new audiences to modern art in a lively, engaging way. It should infuse MOCA with badly needed funds for future exhibits.

Warhol was no Van Gogh, though, and if the show is a blockbuster, it will also be a tribute to America’s infatuation with fame and its weakness for hyperbole. But then Warhol might have been the first to declare that pointing out and encouraging these characteristics was a great genius of his life’s work.