BY Rachel Wolff

A quarter century after Andy Warhol’s death, his work resonates more than ever. Several museum exhibitions are focusing on his influence in painting, photography, film, performance, and more

Deborah Kass, 16 Barbras (The Jewish Jackie Series), 1992,
a Warhol-inspired series with wit and irony added

COURTESY THE ARTIST AND PAUL KASMIN GALLERY, NEW YORK.

“The worst thing that could happen to you after the end of your time would be to be embalmed and laid up in a pyramid,” Andy Warhol wrote in his 1975 book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again). “[I] like the idea of people turning into sand or something, so the machinery keeps working after you die. … I guess disappearing would be shirking work that your machinery still had left to do.”

Few artists are so eager and able to accurately assess their legacy, but there is something eerily prescient about Warhol’s grainy conception of death. His machinery, it seems, is still very much ticking away. His themes, processes, personas, and approach to making art are evident in everything from the ready-mades and Pop portraits of his direct descendents to the work of some of the most boundary-pushing conceptualists, abstract painters, and video artists working today. → Read more