Detail from MARC USA's summer campaign for The Warhol Museum

Warhol Museum's uncomfortable summer campaign

Pittsburgh museum puts together some suitably unnerving ads for its disturbing summer shows

What does the recording artist, transgender occultist and founder of Throbbing Gristle, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, have in common with the LGBQT photographer Caldwell Linker, and the tattoo artist Nick Bubash? Well they are all the subject of exhibitions at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh this summer.

 

MARC USA's summer campaign for The Warhol Museum
MARC USA's summer campaign for The Warhol Museum

Some of this trio of artists' works also make for uncomfortable viewing. So local ad firm MARC USA choose to pair the typical tropes of the summer – beachwear, barbecues, and fun-loving outdoorsiness – with some more uncomfortable imagery, in its campaign for the museum's mid-summer programme.

 

MARC USA's summer campaign for The Warhol Museum
MARC USA's summer campaign for The Warhol Museum

In looking at what unites all these very different artists, we quickly understood that their works are meant to provoke and make you uncomfortable," MARC USA creative director Josh Blasingame told Ad Week. "Our campaign built on that idea by looking at ordinary icons of summer and showing how they could be made more than a little uncomfortable."

 

MARC USA's summer campaign for The Warhol Museum
MARC USA's summer campaign for The Warhol Museum

The images, mocked-up to look like vintage postcards, will run as print ads, digital banners, outdoor posters and genuine postcards. Not the sort of thing you'd want to send back to your in-laws, perhaps, though certainly a provocative way to promote a fairly esoteric set of exhibitions. For more on this, go here. For a greater understanding of art and sexuality, please consider our book, Art and Queer Culture; for more exciting (and occasionally ribald) imagery, try Wild Art; if you like Warhol, you'll love our Warhol books; and before you buy anything, do remember to sign up to our club, for reward points as well as access to great events and offers.