From March 31 to July 3, 2016, an Andy Warhol exhibition was on display at the Jan van der Togt Museum. The exhibition featured a number of works by the American pop art artist himself, but consisted mainly of photographs by various top photographers—from the collection of Hugo and Carla Brown—who captured the fascinating world surrounding Warhol.

Andy Warhol (1928–1987), artist, writer, filmmaker, and actor, is one of the key figures in modern visual art. In the early 1960s, his contemporaries still regarded art as a sanctuary with their conceptual, minimalist, and site-specific work. But Warhol made it clear to the world in one fell swoop that art was now part of modern consumer society: a work of art is a commodity and the artist an entrepreneur whose success depends primarily on his own commercial activities. That is why he called his studio 'The Factory' and presented himself as a superstar among the rich and famous.

In just a few years, Warhol became a global pop icon, with America's elite lining up to have their portraits painted by him. His work was mainly inspired by American pop culture, such as Campbell's soup cans, the Coca-Cola logo, the dollar bill, comic strips, and the glamorous world of celebrities. By quoting—cutting and pasting—and using industrial reproduction techniques such as screen printing and offset printing, Warhol questioned the originality of the artist, the myths surrounding his persona, and his relationship to society.

Photographers such as David McCabe, Billy Name, Steve Schapiro, Thomas Hoepker, and Ron Galella captured Warhol in the New York underground scene in and around the Factory. These photographs, lovingly collected and housed in the private collection of Hugo and Carla Brown, paint a picture of the early 1960s, a period marked by the emergence of the phenomenon of the 'artist as merchant'. It is therefore not surprising that Warhol forms the basis of the Brown collection. They see his ability to gather creative people around him—who shape contemporary society in the visual arts, film, music, dance, and literature—as an example and motivation for their choice of modern art collection.

Photo: Steve Schapiro – Warhol, Velvet through door