From 31 March to 3 July 2016, an exhibition by Andy Warhol was on display at Museum Jan van der Togt. The exhibition showed a number of works by the American pop art artist himself, but mainly photos from various top photographers - from the collection of Hugo and Carla Brown - who captured the fascinating world around Warhol.

Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), artist, writer, film maker and actor, is one of the key figures in modern visual art. In the early 1960s, his contemporaries still see art as a sanctuary with their conceptual, minimal, process and site-specific work. But Warhol makes it clear to the world at once that art is now part of the modern consumer society, a work of art a commodity and the artist an entrepreneur whose success depends primarily on his own commercial activities. That's why he calls his studio the Factory and presents himself as a superstar in the middle of the rich and famous.

In a few years, Warhol has grown into a pop icon of mega-proportions that the happy few of America are forced to insist on being portrayed. In his work, he is mainly inspired by American pop culture, such as Campbell's soup, the Coca Cola logo, the dollar bill, the comic strip and the glamor world full of celebrities. By quoting - cutting and pasting - and making use of industrial reproduction techniques such as screen printing and off-set, Warhol questions the originality of the artist, the myths that surround him and his relationship to society.

Photographers such as David McCabe, Billy Name, Steve Schapiro, Thomas Hoepker and Ron Galella captured Warhol in the New York underground scene in and around the Factory. Collected with love and housed in the private collection of Hugo and Carla Brown, these photos sketch a time characteristic of the early '60s, in which a new path is taken with the phenomenon of' artist as trader '. It is therefore not surprising that Warhol forms the basis of the Brown collection. They see his capacity to gather creative people around them who shape contemporary society in the visual arts, film, music, dance and literature as a model and motivate the choice of their collection of modern art.

Photo: Steve Schapiro - Warhol, Velvet through door