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In celebration of the art of business and the business of the arts, the Sarasota County Arts Council is proud to present Jack Dowd’s Andy 15 Times ¬¬— an audacious demonstration of modern American sculpture.
The awe-inspiring exhibit, comprised of 15 100-pound, 68-inch Andy Warhol replicas, is currently on display at the Sarasota/Bradenton International Airport.
The exhibit is featured as part of the Arts Council’s ongoing celebration of Sarasota’s commitment to the business of the arts, which will tie in with the 2008 80th birthday of perhaps America’s greatest icon for the marriage of business and art, Andy Warhol.
“Andy Warhol embodied ‘the art businessman’,” explains Martine Meredith Collier, executive director of the Sarasota County Arts Council. “He was a marketing genius who redefined American contemporary art, art production, and the concept of art as celebrity.”
“What better metaphor for a celebration of Sarasota’s success at the business of the arts than the man who helped define art as a prime marketable commodity?”
“Sarasota County is blessed to be a community where our arts organizations are not only highly efficient businesses in their own right, but our local industry understands and supports the role that the arts play in Sarasota’s economic and cultural prosperity,” Collier continues. “Having an exhibit of this caliber at SRQ will serve as reminder to everyone coming through the airport that they have, indeed, come to visit Florida’s Cultural Coast.”
Known for illuminating the human condition through larger-than-life sculpture, Jack Dowd has often been quoted as stating: “My work is for the enjoyment of lovers of humor and to the annoyance of all others.”
According to Dowd, “Andy 15 Times seeks to capture Andy Warhol's elusive character as an artist who carefully cultivated his public persona as a superstar while exploring America's obsession with celebrity.” A cultural visionary, Warhol left a legacy of what the present has proved to become. His prediction: "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes," has proved prophetic of today's culture of reality TV, media starlet feeding frenzies, and online social networking sites.
Andy 10, 15, or 20 times was designed to be exhibited in a group setting in keeping with the Warhol tradition of multiples. For as Warhol himself said: "I like things to be exactly the same over and over again. If I'm going to sit and watch the same thing I saw the night before, I don't want it to be essentially the same - I want it to be exactly the same."
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