Oct 25, 2012 1 min read

“Before and Happily Ever After,” an exhibit featuring nearly 75 paintings, photographs and sculptures by New York artist Deborah Kass, will begin Saturday and continue through Jan. 6 at the Andy Warhol Musuem, Pittsburgh. After a decade of showing landscapes and abstract paintings in the 1980s, Kass began appropriating the work of Andy Warhol. Beginning in 1992, Kass presented the grouping of Warhol’s well-known celebrity paintings for a contingent of her own heroes, among them Gertrude Stein, Sandy Koufax and Barbra Streisand. Kass’ Warholesque paintings of Streisand in Yeshiva drag from the film “Yentl,” titled “My Elvis,” are an example of the artist’s genre- and gender-bending sensibility. This retrospective features Kass’ early landscapes, as well as her geometric abstractions. The Art History Paintings series presents playful quips on iconic artworks and pop culture. The exhibition ends with the recent series: feel-good paintings for feel-bad times. Using nostalgia in a new way, these works incorporate lyrics borrowed from “The Great American Songbook” and some of the greatest hits of post-war American painting. They address history, power, gender and ethnicity, which have been themes of Kass’ work for more than 20 years.