Andy Warhol and William Morris face off in Oxford exhibition

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/03/andy-warhol-william-morris-oxford-exhibition

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Jeremy Deller was groped by Andy Warhol in a Ritz hotel room but he’s not complaining. “I took it as a compliment,” he says in a Guardian interview. “I was quite flattered. I know it’s not politically correct to say so.”

Deller was speaking as he opened a show in Oxford in which he draws direct links between two of his artistic heroes – Warhol and the Victorian pioneer William Morris.

His surreal night with Warhol came in 1986 when Deller was 20, arriving in the artist’s room to find him and his entourage watching The Benny Hill Show with the sound turned down, while listening to Roxy Music’s greatest hits.

It was a pivotal moment in Deller’s life. “We just spent a couple of hours there, with him taking pictures of us. We had these hats and stuff in our bag and we started trying them on. It was innocent fun until he groped me.”

The encounter led to an invite to spend some of the summer at Warhol’s Factory. Deller stressed there was no repeat of the incident.

It led to a passion for Warhol that he is now mixing with his passion for Morris.

The Modern Oxford gallery show includes a Warhol tapestry of Marilyn Monroe going on display in a public museum for the first time since it was created in 1968.

The work stares cheerfully over a large room at another tapestry, created in part by William Morris and showing the Arthurian knights Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival seeing the Holy Grail.

Deller’s thesis is that there are numerous parallels and connections between the two men. “For me, these two figures have so much in common, not least their tendency to be contradictory.

“Morris railed against capitalism and yet he established a shop in central London bearing his family name, and Warhol’s trademark blankness, I think, belies a deeply political artist.”

Deller said he was asking the audience “to suspend their disbelief momentarily and make connections about art across two centuries.”

Warhol and Morris were arguably the most influential artists of their times and both ran successful business empires that survive today.

In the show, Deller has mingled photographs of a whiskered and suited Morris at work in his studio with images of a sun-glassed, floppy-haired Warhol at work in The Factory in New York.

Displaying the tapestry is a coup. It was first shown at the Charles Slatkin galleries in 1968 after they asked contemporary artists to submit designs for tapestries.

Warhol gave the Marilyn design, which was then hand-woven into a tapestry. The plan was for 20 editions but it is believed only six were made and the version on display is the only one recorded by the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. It usually hangs in the private collection of the entrepreneur and businessman Larry Wasser.

• Love is Enough is at Modern Art Oxford from 6 December until 8 March 2015