STOCKHOLM.- Spritmuseum in Stockholm announced that the acclaimed exhibition Money on the Wall: Andy Warhol has been extended until September 14, 2025. Curated by renowned art critic and Warhol expert Blake Gopnik, this exhibition explores Warhol’s concept of Business Art — 'the step that comes after art.'

"People who claim Andy Warhol was a sell-out are absolutely right. Business Art was one of his most important and influential art forms. And from the very beginning, the dollar bill was one of Andy Warhol’s favourite motifs" says Blake Gopnik.

From the day he launched his Pop Art, early in 1961, Warhol played with the idea that he was participating in the money-making values of the consumer culture he depicted. By the end of the 1960s, Warhol was participating in — and had played a role in launching — a new trend in conceptual art that saw the vehicles of business and finance used as art supplies. He coined a name for it: Business Art, "the step that comes after art." It is hardly an exaggeration to say that modern life in the West is essentially built around money, and the power and goods it can buy. Few artists have grappled with that basic fact as fully and fiercely as Warhol did. His art asks viewers to do the same.

The exhibition, including artworks from international museums and private collections in Europe and the United States, of which some have not been exhibited before, begins with a section on Warhol’s work as a commercial artist in the 1950s. This is followed by a section on the classic Pop Art pieces, touching on economics, commerce, and commodification. One of its high points is "Soap Opera," an early Warhol work that consists of genuine TV commercials combined with scenes improvised by his entourage.

Money on the Wall includes a selection of Warhol’s purely commercial works, such as video commercials for products ranging from laxatives to ice cream. Many pieces in which he features as an advertising model, fashion model, film maker or restaurateur are also included.

The show also looks at a group of postwar artists, including Yves Klein, Chris Burden, and Lee Lozano, who, like Warhol, engaged with business and finance to make art about our economic realities. Finally, the show presents several contemporary artists engaging with similar themes, including Darren Bader, Andrea Fraser, Takashi Murakami, Carey Young, and the American art collective MSCHF.

"These artists’ work provides a context enabling a new understanding of Warhol’s ‘sell-out’ in the 1970's and 80's — including his lucrative portraits, ads for Absolut Vodka, and pastiches of Edvard Munch’s famous lithographs," says Mia Sundberg, art curator at Spritmuseum.

Blake Gopnik, born 1963, is an American art historian, writer, and critic based in New York. He is one of the world’s leading Andy Warhol experts and author of the comprehensive biography Warhol (2020). Based on years of archival research and interviews with hundreds of Warhol’s friends, lovers, and enemies, the book traces the birth of Warhol’s innovations, and how they shaped how artists have thought and worked from his day to our own. In Money on the Wall, Gopnik places a special focus on aspects of Warhol’s work that have often been dismissed as mere commerce.

Artist list: Genpei Akasegawa, Chris Burden, Ed Keinholz, Lee Lozano, Robert Morris, Takashi Murakami, Darren Bader, Andrea Fraser, Jens Haaning, Mason Rothschild, Bernar Venet, Carey Young, Andy Warhol, the art collective MSCHF.