by Douglas E. Love For The News Bulletin

PEORIA – Lou Reed said of Andy Warhol, “If you’d ask him he’d tell you straight out, ‘It’s just work, the most important thing is work.’”

Warhol was the iconic leader of the Pop Art movement; his life’s work framed him as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, photographer, magazine founder, and world class socialite.
He spent the sixties painting Campbell soup cans, and making cow wall paper, Brillo boxes and floating silver pillows.
He was shot in 1968, two days before Robert F. Kennedy was slain.  When he woke up in the hospital days later, he recalled, “I heard fantasy words about thousands of people being in St. Patrick’s Cathedral praying and carrying on, and then I heard the word ‘Kennedy’ and that brought me back … because then I realized, well, here I was, in pain.”
In the seventies, Warhol spent much of his time making commission portraits for nearly every celebrity we can recall from that decade – Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, etc.
He also started shooting with the Polaroid.  For those that were not around then, it was a type of camera which would develop the pictures almost immediately after you clicked the button.
From 1970 up to his death in 1987, Andy Warhol took thousands of Polaroid pictures – many of which have not been seen by the public.  
However, last October, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts launched its 20th Anniversary Photographic Legacy Program.
That program gave away 28,543 original Warhol (polariod and black and white) photographs from that era.  The estimated value of that collection was in excess of $28 million.  The recipients of that unprecedented gift were 183 college and university art museums across the United States.
Now, through the end of this October, you can see 24 of the 150 photographs that were given to Bradley University.
The collection will include pictures of figure skater Dorothy Hammill; baseball star Tom Seaver; journalist Maria Shriver;  Princess Caroline of Monaco; and many, many others.
Warhol was to have said, “My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person.”
And that statement will fit the bill for all these pictures in one aspect or the other, or both.
Bradley is planning a more comprehensive exhibit next year. 
In the meantime, you can get an early glimpse of these rare Warhol treasures at the Heuser Art Center Gallery located at 1400 W. Bradley.  The Warhol Photographs exhibit will run through October 31.  The exhibit is free and the gallery will open to the public from 10-11:30 a.m. and 1:30-4:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday.  For more information, please call 309-677-2989.
Around Town
During the month of October, you can try your hand at solving the Art Theft Mystery of “Who Stole the Warhol.”  Those who solve the mystery will be entered into a grand prize drawing. For more info about the mystery, entry forms, questions, and clues go to http://www.peoriapubliclibrary.org  The mystery will conclude with a presentation by retired FBI agent, Bob Wittman, on international art crimes at Lakeview Museum Nov. 13 at 7:00 p.m.