Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art presents “Silver Clouds,” an avant-garde work by Andy Warhol, a renowned icon of American pop art. The exhibition opened on Feb. 11 and will be on view until June 14, 2026.
To say that the exhibit is different hardly captures its uniqueness, because Andy Warhol was a highly unconventional artist who gained fame with his Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, and paintings and prints of celebrities and politicians in the 1960s.
Pop art emerged in Britain and the United States as a protest to the abstract expressionist movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Pop art is an abbreviation of “popular art.” Pop artists wanted to portray everyday objects and mass market products in contrast to abstract expressionists.
Andy Warhol’s life as a pop art leader was marked by experimentation with new media, approaches, forms, and shapes in the visual arts. “I see art in everything . . . It’s art if you see it as art,” he said.
Philbrook Museum of Art announced on its website that in 1964, disillusioned with traditional approaches to painting and sculpture, Warhol reached out to engineers to help him create a “floating painting.” The solution was Scotchpak, a new material at the time, primarily used to wrap sandwiches. Upon seeing the material, Warhol insisted that they make clouds, and the weightless, dreamy sculptures were born.
In the traditional classification of art, “Silver Clouds” is not a painting or a sculpture, but it is more of a theater with a stage where silver pillows filled with helium float in the air inside the red color gallery.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful!” Warhol’s quotation is written on the back wall of the gallery. Philbrook visitors come inside and interact with the floating pillows; they are allowed to touch them. The viewers smile and push the pillows in various directions.
Also, four fans blowing in the upper corners of the room help move the pillows. The installation reveals the beauty of an art form that feels both playful and unexpected. The floating silver pillows even come together visually like strokes of paint in motion.
Someone should not miss the portrait of Marilyn Monroe printed by Warhol before entering the “Silver Clouds” gallery. The portrait is accompanied by a summary of Warhol’s achievements in pop art, offering a clear explanation of his style and the essence of his works.
