Andy Warhol's shoe fascination inspires new Pittsburgh exhibit

During the 1950s, Andy Warhol worked as an illustrator for I. Miller, a shoe manufacturer. Shoes as a cultural symbol continued to fascinate him throughout his career.

Warhol’s shoe illustrations are a point of departure for “Paola Pivi: I Want It All,” an exhibition opening April 22 at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh’s North Side.

The artist, who divides her time between her native Italy and Alaska, is “celebrated for her provocative eccentricity,” according to a release. Pivi works in mediums including performance, design, sculpture, video, photography and large-scale installation.

“I Want It All” will include an installation commissioned for The Warhol featuring 250 pairs of shoes, 125 of which have been worn in everyday life by people around the world, which will be exhibited alongside identical, unworn pairs. The shoes will span makers from Converse to Manolo Blahnik.

“For the past year, we’ve had shoes being shipped and delivered around the globe,” said The Warhol’s Chief Curator Jose Carlos Diaz, who organized the exhibition. “We have people in Pittsburgh wearing shoes, people in Milan, people in Miami, all over the place. One pair ended up in India. For every pair that’s being worn for a full year, we also have the matching identical pair that will always remain pristine and unworn.”

Those who have been wearing the shoes were asked to wear them frequently in their everyday lives.

”Shoes themselves are very ordinary — although obviously there are certainly extraordinary shoes — because, for the most part, everybody wears shoes,” Diaz said. “The idea is that the shoe itself holds the memory of where you’ve walked; so each shoe almost acts like a diary of someone’s life, especially when you look at the final result, the wear and tear, the marks, the scrapes, the dirt, the dust, the condition that we’re hoping for a year later.”

Colorful polar bears

The shoe installation will join some new pieces and other works that are being shown in Pittsburgh for the first time.

“I Want It All” will include photo and video documentation of Pivi’s performances, site-specific installations, sculptures of baby polar bears covered in colorful plumage and new, soft sculptures produced in collaboration with More-So, a division of Italian design company Moroso.

“I am particularly excited about working with shoes. It brings me back to Andy’s fascination for shoes and for people,” Pivi said. “He always had an intimate connection with the others he surrounded himself with, as if highlighting who they were and what they did, in a way that, in my perception, was voluptuous.

“In the same way, the individually worn shoes will be displayed collectively and I will add the unworn identical shoes, as a flashback, to what it was before, and to what would have been without the life cycle of each individual participant,” she said.

While Diaz intends to have a label identifying the shoe project participants, he doesn’t expect there to be further information on them or where the shoes were worn.

“Paolo’s work is extremely conceptual and she restricts herself from explaining the piece,” he said. “She certainly likes the audience to understand the work on their own terms.”

Born in Italy in 1971, Pivi studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions across Europe, Asia and the United States.

The exhibition coincides with the upcoming publication, “Paola Pivi.” The monograph, the most extensive to date on the artist’s work, will have more than 250 images, including previously unpublished work, and five newly commissioned essays.

Running through Aug. 15, “I Want It All” will have related programming, including a book launch and an ornithology field trip. For information, visit warhol.org.