October 23 – Jonathan Flatley

Associate Professor, Department of English,
Wayne State University

“Andy Warhol’s Skin Problems”

“Andy Warhol’s Skin Problems” examines Warhol’s recurring, career-long preoccupation with the color-line, arguing that Warhol’s Pop praxis, and the centrality of liking and likeness to it, is fundamentally inflected by the racist and anti-racist politics of the early 1960s . It focuses on Warhol’s attunement to the representation and mediation of skin color, suggesting that Warhol’s work invites us to consider how the importance of media specific, aesthetic oppositions between black and white, and between black and white and color shape how we come to “know,” “see,” “feel,” and “experience” racial difference.

JFlatley