Painting, according to Andy Warhol, was merely a phase he went through. Quite a dismissive statement for a discipline on which his reputation was made, but it was perhaps not meant to denigrate the genre, but more that Warhol always regarded his work as existing outside standard categories, or crossing between them. Warhol made the remark after abandoning painting for film work (adding that he had really wanted to be a tap dancer and not an artist at all). He was also increasingly involved with other artistic platforms, including dance and music, and the intersection of Warhol and music is currently being revisited in an exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz.

This year marks an anniversary of sorts; it is 50 years since fellow filmmaker Barbara Rubin introduced Warhol to The Velvet Underground, whom Warhol went on to manage and nominally produce. The museum has been transformed into a replica of Warhol’s Silver Factory, with the aluminium foil-covered walls inspired by Billy Name’s apartment and which acted as a literal and metaphorical mirror. The show includes many of Warhol’s most famous pictorial works, along with more than 150 photographs from the likes of Name, Nat Finkelstein and Steve Schapiro, archive material, and vinyl record sleeves. Warhol Underground closes 23 November.

@pompidoumetz

David Dalton, Chuck Wein, Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Billy Name (ground), and Larry Latreille watching Andy bomb painting the image of a flower, The Factory, New York, March 1965
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ADAGP, Paris 2015

Steve Schapiro, Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground , Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, 1966
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ADAGP, Paris 2015

Stephen Shore, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, Nico, Ari, Moe Tucker, John Cale, The Factory, NYC , 1965-1967 printed 2008
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / ADAGP, Paris 2015