Celebrities for the ages

Worshipping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits/Warhol Icons

Through April 27

The… Worshipping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits/Warhol Icons

Through April 27

The Andy Warhol Museum

(412) 237-8300

Mass-produced, idolatrous, materialist, and hanging in a museum.

These are only some of the qualities shared by the works currently exhibited in the seventh-floor galleries at The Warhol.

More than 30 of Andy Warhol’s silkscreen portraits of elite celebrity and society figures hang alongside more than 30 traditional Chinese ancestral portraits. While most admirers of the arts in the United States and abroad would immediately recognize the famous, vividly colored Warhol portraits of public celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe or Jackie Kennedy Onassis, the Chinese portraits have been used exclusively for private ancestor-worship ceremonies for centuries. Only since the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 have Western collectors appreciated and acquired these portraits as works of art. Their suppression as “superstitious” artifacts by Mao Zedong after 1949 increased the impetus for their preservation.

Private collector and New Mexico horse rancher Richard Pritzlaff acquired the collection in the 1930s and 1940s from Wu Lai-hsi, a dealer in China. Many Chinese families, desperate at the time to save their ancestor portraits – and equally desperate for hard cash – offered the pieces for sale. After being briefly owned by Ross Perot and then by Pritzlaff again, the collection was acquired by the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.

Traditionally, a family mourning the death of a patriarch would commission the ancestor portraits as part of the burial rituals. According to Pitt history professor Evelyn Rawski, a speaker at the opening of the exhibit, failing to follow the required rituals could lead to disaster:

“Ritual is what transforms a dead body into a beneficent ancestor. An ancestor, who can, with proper ritual, will bestow blessings on descendants – blessings being many male children, good fortune and wealth, high office. If you do not treat your dead person well, then that person can become a ghost. That is a horrifying prospect because ghosts can affect people outside the family; they affect communities. So if people – families – don’t take care of their dead in the right way, don’t perform the rituals, don’t get them food and wine and incense, then they can become scourges on communities.”

On special holidays throughout the year, each family would unroll the scrolls that contained their ancestor portraits and make ritual sacrifices. In many areas of China, it was believed that the spirit of the ancestor would recognize its own portrait and inhabit it for the duration of the ceremonies. For this reason, it was vital for the portrait to exactly resemble the departed – for a confused spirit might end up in the wrong family’s painting. The elite could usually afford a custom portrait with a realistically detailed face and accurate clothing, painted according to the deceased’s social rank. The poor were often stuck with a generic sketch.

Since just about everybody needed to purchase some kind of ancestor portrait eventually, an industry of specialty shops emerged to efficiently mass-produce the paintings. Three of the pieces now displayed at The Warhol were obviously drawn from the same stencil, with variations in colors of clothing, and of course, different faces. Other works were produced by pasting custom-made head cutouts on prepainted body backgrounds. Extra copies could be prepared for the brother who lived in distant Korea.

Warhol’s silkscreen portraits were commissioned as well by the wealthy showbiz and social idols of the 1970s and 1980s – or their promoters – each paying thousands of dollars to be immortalized by the pop art guru. Warhol’s Factory would usually produce eight versions of each portrait, and many were presented in pairs.

Today in Pittsburgh, Dolly Parton’s crazy eye shadow from 1985 is juxtaposed with the serene Yinxiang, Prince Yi, of the 1700s. Sexy Debbie Harry competes with the antique come-on bedroom eyes of “Beauty Holding an Orchid.” then they can become scourges on communities.”

The exhibit carries a subtext about the fleeting nature of fame, status and life. Many of the Chinese portraits are of highly ranked officials of a millennial empire that considered itself only second to Heaven. Their names are all but forgotten now, except for the dazzling portraits created to commemorate their deaths. And what about the celebrity in-crowd of the ’70s and ’80s? People have long stopped talking about Andy’s manifestation of high pop status in his guest-starring role in “The Love Boat” in 1985.

But some stars will surely shine brightly for many years to come with celebrity theme parks, such as Dollywood. And, of course, there is The Andy Warhol Museum, where one can admire the ancestors.

Rawski muses, “Think about the fate of these individuals who are in these portraits. They should be happy that for today and for the time of the exhibition at The Warhol, they will be open, and people will be able to see them and communicate with them again.”