Displaying works that captured the beauty of the glamorous in the everyday, Istanbul’s Galerist is hosting a much-anticipated exhibition of iconic 20th-century artist Andy Warhol throughout June.

The show centers on the famous artist’s films and polaroids, which are coming to Turkey’s largest city for the first time

“The films and film portraits were very important for Warhol’s career,” Geralyn Huxley, curator of film and video at New York’s Andy Warhol Museum, as well as the curator of the Istanbul show, told the Hürriyet Daily News last week. “He spent five years totally concentrated on filming people. It was during the 1960s, when he first started the change over from commercial art to fine art.”

“I only wanted to find great people and let them be themselves and talk about what they usually talk about,” Warhol once said. Duly, the artist filmed famous people, aiming to show them as beautifully as they were in their daily lives while doing everyday activities.

In fact, the “real,” inner meaning behind the legendary Warhol works, such as of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, unravels itself. The videos, which reveal the hidden aspect of Warhol, also show the viewers how the artist’s interest in celebrities rose over time. Warhol transformed celebrities and created unique works with his film portraits.

“As a child, around the age of 8, Andy started to collect photographs of movie stars,” said Eric C. Shiner, acting director of the Andy Warhol Museum, told the Daily News.

“He sent letters to Hollywood studios and contacted Shirley Temple. Temple sent her photograph to Andy Warhol,” he said.

Warhol had a book of movie stars and celebrities, whom he adored; as a result, he fed his hunger for celebrities by painting and filming them.

Musician Lou Reed, writer Susan Sontag, socialite Edie Sedgwick, poet Allen Ginsberg, artist Dennis Hopper and others are featured in the films.

Warhol’s iconic works, such as Soup Cans, Elvis, and Marilyn started to gain fame as Warhol began working on his film projects. The films show a different aspect of Warhol’s art, according to Huxley.

Whereas the people and his paintings were iconic and glamorous, the people in his films were natural. Beauty had a deeper meaning for Warhol; while he valued beauty, his understanding was different than the beauty of the stars he filmed. He liked them to talk and to do everyday activities.

“Talkers are doing something. Beauties are being something. Which isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just that I don’t know what it is they’re being,” Warhol said in the book “The Philosophy of Warhol.”

“I really don’t care that much about ‘Beauties.’ What I really like are Talkers. To me, good talkers are beautiful because good talk is what I love,” he said.

In such a way, Warhol was able to rediscover the stars’ real beauty – the beauty that viewers had become acquainted with before.

Noting that his videos not only showed beautiful celebrities, Huxley said: “People were still beautiful in Warhol’s videos but you could see them doing everyday activities like eating at a restaurant, cutting their hair, or talking. The films showed another aspect of Andy Warhol’s interests.”

It is possible to see Edie Sedgwick, Mario Montez and Gerard Malang in Warhol’s movies as they act normally, talk, smoke and hang out.

Galerist’s branches in Galatasaray and Pera are featuring such Warhol films as “Lupe,” starring Sedgwick and made in 1965; “Empire,” a 16-millimeter film from 1964; “Blow Jo,” another 16-millimeter film from 1964; “Camp” from 1965; “Horse,” also from 1965, and “Mario Banana No.1” from 1964.

The exhibition will continue until July 9.

Brillo Boxes and the scandal

In 1962 just after creating his famous soup cans, Warhol began work on 100 wooden sculptures of packing containers: Brillo Boxes. However, what was done in the past is now a big scandal for the art world.

Everything started with Brian Balfour-Oatts, a British art dealer who found the Brillo boxes that he assumed belonged to Warhol. He was sure because of Pontus Hultan, a seminal figure in the contemporary art world who provided impeccable provenance for the pieces, ensured the authenticity of the wooden boxes.

Later on, Balfour-Oatts sold 10 of the boxes through Christie’s to a buyer for 475,650 pounds.

However, after his success of selling the boxes, Balfour-Oats received a letter. He was sued because there was a problem with the wooden Brillo boxes. It was alleged that the boxes were not original and they did not belong to Warhol. With deep research, it was discovered that Hulton created an extra 100 wooden boxes and offered them to the contemporary art market.

When Olle Granath, a personal friend of Hulton, said there had been no wooden Brillo boxes on display in Sweden in 1968, all eyebrows raised and discussion began in the art world about Warhol works. The boxes that had sold for millions of pounds were not real.

The Andy Warhol Foundation took on the case and checked the originality of the works.

Apparently, it turns out that not only the wooden boxes, but also plenty of other works are not genuine.

Speaking about this scandal, Shiner said: “There are fakes in the markets. Fakes happen when an artist reaches a certain way of fame.” Warhol museum does not interfere in the authentification of the works, said Huxley. “And movies are not for sale.”

However, it is a widely known fact that Warhol is a very productive artist and everyone was doing something, painting and drawing in his “Factory.” But this does not mean that he did not create some of the paintings and prints. “There are artists working like this. This is how Jeff Koons makes his art,” said Geralyn. “And, Andy Warhol was always there and he was always painting,” added Shiner.

“This is how directors work. It is the idea that the artist has created,” said Huxley added. This does not mean that those works are fake.