In the early 1980s, the art world didn’t know what to make of Andy Warhol. Already famous for silkscreening all-American icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Warhol had begun to represent more problematic iconography with equally deadpan irony.
Most troubling of all was the hammer and sickle—a symbol of the Soviet Union—which had become an emblem of Communist aggression and Cold War tension. Warhol astutely recognized that the hammer and sickle had fallen into the same category as Marilyn, turned into kitsch by endless replication.
Warhol’s articulation of this equivalence was bound to resonate with Martin Muller, an art dealer who had recently made his name with the first show of Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde paintings in San Francisco.
Muller had seen the Soviet propaganda machine from the inside. Visiting the Factory one afternoon in 1982, Muller offered Warhol a solo show at Modernism.
Warhol’s first-ever gallery appearance in Northern California, the Modernism exhibition drew a crowd. Hundreds of people attended the opening. A month later, it was still the talk of the town. Muller had guaranteed to sell two of Warhol’s paintings, priced at a bargain $25,000 apiece. He’d sold only one and had to buy the second work for himself.
Forty-two years later, as the gallery celebrates its 45th anniversary, nobody has any doubts about Warhol’s importance or Muller’s prescience.
From the Russian and Ukrainian avant-gardes to Pop; Photorealism to socio-political art, etc., Modernism has consistently exhibited work that less adventurous galleries have shunned, only to show time and again that artistic quality is more important than popular taste.