A pop art injection in Tel Aviv

Pop art lovers are currently wanted at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. In quite a coup for Israel’s premiere art museum, a huge collection of pieces from the famed Mugrabi collection are now on display.

Five major artists from the personal collection of Jose Mugrabi and his sons David and Jose, the famed Syrian-Jewish art aficionados with Jerusalem roots and New York residences, make up “Wanted: Selected Works from the Mugrabi Collection.” These include several works by Andy Warhol, one of the most significant contemporary artists in history, as well as Tom Wesselmann, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Prince and Adam McEwen.

Some of the Warhols on display include the artist’s most iconic and glamour-obsessed, including his painting of a Coca-Cola bottle and portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor and Elvis Presley. There are also a handful of his late works, including self-portraits and two appropriations of Leonardo Da Vinci’s peerless “The Last Supper.”

Warhol, who defined the practice of consumer-tinged art, is joined on the walls by his fellow pop art pioneer Wesselmann, who elevated the banality of American consumerism and mass media with still lifes of quotidian products and nearly abstract female nudes.

Combined with pieces by Prince, McEwan and Basquiat, the exhibit is a chance to ruminate on the role of culture in capitalism; an often chilling look at how our obsessions with media and money translate onto canvas and can speak back to us from gallery walls.

The exhibit, which opened last week, is curated by Suzanne Landau. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is open every day except Sunday and is at 27 Shaul HaMelech Boulevard in Tel Aviv.