And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,/ She needs not June for beauty's heightening

I’m talking about Andy Warhol, of course.

A is for Andy was an exhibition of original – get this, original – Andy Warhol prints held on the 16^th and 17^th of last month and I was eager to grant myself the privilege of seeing Warhol’s prints with my very own eyes.

I became interested in pop art after being introduced to the genre about 2 years ago during art lessons. We experimented with pop art, post-modernism and sensationalism during those lessons and those experiences introduced my artistic palate – or palette, since we’re talking about art – to a whole new kind of art. Never had I imagined that repeated prints of soup cans, large canvases splattered with multi-coloured dots, disfigured landscapes and upside-down flags could be considered art. Sure, I had already seen many, many surrealist pieces of art and other modern art pieces from the Guggenheim and Tate Modern, but pop art was something entirely foreign.

Pop art was different. Flashy, thought-provoking, crazy, inspiring, deadpan, witty, gaudy – it struck a completely new chord. I was introduced to artists like Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Keith Haring and Roy Lichtenstein, and suddenly everything I had thought about art before was overwritten. No, art isn’t all about Renaissance painting, baroque and academism styles. All those great names taught me a huge deal about art and they certainly gained a deep respect from me. Naturally, I was very excited when I heard about A is for Andy.

I headed down to the exhibition on the 17^th. Spying the long queue outside the entrance, I braced myself for a long wait. However, the speed at which I proceeded into the exhibition surprised me most pleasantly, and soon I was staring straight into the face of a Mao print.

As in all art exhibitions, photography was not permitted, so here’re some scans from the A is for Andy brochure:

My personal favourites were the Perrier bottles and Superman. I’d seen the Superman print on paper and on the Internet on many other occasions but none of those did justice to the actual piece of art.

The exhibition was truly excellent, and my love for the post-modernist genre was immediately rekindled. The Electric chair, Dollar sign, Liz (Taylor), Marilyn (Monroe), Mickey Mouse, Perrier bottles and the Mao prints… All of them icons on their own, created by the icon himself – Andy Warhol.