Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West has opened a new eye-popping exhibition that features the works of Andy Warhol and Billy Schenck.
“Western Pop: Andy Warhol & Billy Schenck” features 14 screen prints culled from Warhol’s Cowboys & Indians collection, Warhol’s last major production, and 29 oil canvas paintings and serigraphs from Schenck’s “Myth of the American West” collection.
The works were previously displayed at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas.
“We were working with the Briscoe Western Art Museum since 2018 to negotiate and get it here and it’s really a wonderful first-of-its-kind exhibition for us,” said museum Assistant Director Dr. Tricia Loscher.
“It’s just a wonderful exhibition to house two powerful artists in Andy Warhol, who is an iconic name, and Billy Schenck, who is less known globally. The marriage of those two artists made it a perfect fit for us.”
When Loscher first learned that there was a collection of Western artworks made by an artist best known for silk-screen paintings of soup cans and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, she did a double take.
“I was just fascinated with the idea of this and how it hasn’t been presented how Andy Warhol was part of the West despite being based out of New York and how he influenced the West and other artists,” Loscher said.
Only 250 copies of the Warhol portfolio were printed.
Loscher discovered that Warhol had a strong affinity for Western culture.
He frequently donned cowboy boots, shot the satirical Hollywood western “Lonesome Cowboys” in North Tucson and Oracle, and frequently visited the Gustaf George High Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian in New York to sift through its archives.
Warhol drew inspiration from photographs and postcards he found in the archives and began working on “Cowboys & Indians” in 1985, nearly two years before his death.
He created silk-screen prints of figures like General George Custer, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt and commonly traded items like the buffalo nickel and Katsina dolls made the Hopi tribe.
“It’s very interesting that he was consciously thinking about how he was going to do – and what he was trying to say with – this series,” Loscher said.
“He really spoke through his heart about his love of the American West which didn’t come out of his work that often.”
Loscher hopes that the images draw younger audiences and create a better understanding of the American West.
“It’s really about making those connections between the artists and how the West has influenced different artists working in different ways from silk screens to serigraphs to paintings,” Loscher said.
Once guests turn the corner past Warhol’s work, they are greeted with similarly fashioned works by Schenck, who grew up in Wyoming and was strongly influenced by Warhol.
“He was in New York in the days when Andy Warhol was there working at the same time and he had an opportunity to work a little bit with Warhol,” Loscher explains. “Schenck was really influenced by Warhol and what those artists in New York were doing along with some of the themes shown in Hollywood films.
“That’s when he started to create what we see today in his work with his pop art, iconic imagery that speaks to a vast array of mass consumerism and stereotypes.”
Like Warhol, Schenck was strongly interested in the American West and Native American culture.
The bulk of Schenck’s works pay paying homage to beloved spaghetti westerns.
“Billy Schenck took film stills and reinterpreted it,” Loscher said.
One of the most noticeable characters depicted in the exhibition is Clint Eastwood’s “The Man With No Name” from “A Fistful of Dollars” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
“By having an exhibition like this where we can address a lot of topics with our docents, we can reach out to new audiences and address that narrative of traditional Western art or Western realism while telling those stories with different color palettes,” Loscher said.
Loscher also sees this exhibition as a starting point for bigger conversations and events that could take place at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West in the near future.
“I think there are so many conversations that could and need to happen out of this,” she said.
“It’d be wonderful to do a symposium for a weekend with different speakers on different perspectives that way different generations could give their interpretation.
“What I would like to start doing more is having exhibitions where it’s almost curated by the community where people can come in and talk about works and get so many different perspectives and ways of thinking about pieces.”
If You Go:
“Western Pop: Andy Warhol & Billy Schenck”
When: On display now through Nov. 26 during museum hours.
Where: 3830 N. Marshall Way, Scottsdale
Cost: Admission starts at $25
Info: Scottsdalemuseumwest.org
