I have been mulling over for some time about the reason for my experience. I arrived at the musuem full of a delicous lunch, purveyed the offerings in the expansive downstairs galleries and then finally made my way upstairs for the Warhol exhibit. 
I was delighted as I turned the corner to see the actual "Turquoise Marilyn" that I had seen so often reproduced (Andy would be so proud), though unfortunately, I believe the placement of this work was ill advised since it set me up for the expectation that there would be more of that. In truth, of Warhol's later, more popular endeavors, there were about five or six (some not even placed in the same exhibit, but along a blank wall on another level) and when I looked closer at the exhibit's title, I realized the exhibit only covers two years of his early works, his formative works, shall we say.
Enter profound disappointment.
As I wandered through the rest of the carefully culled and displayed collection, I began to accept the collective idea, especially after viewing a smaller room with the original photographs of accidents and deaths and mourning that showed how Warhol used cropping and colors to emphasize our fascination with gore. This was probably the most musuem-ish part, but I enjoyed the connections that the curator must have been making about Warhol's process, something we rarely see when it comes to artists.
The rest of the exhibit (which was rather short), featured many early works that lacked the overtly kitchsy pop references, but shone with a patina of an emerging concept, that ultimately consumed Warhol's complete attention, the silkscreening process and the idea of repetitive images. It was this that most captured my mind as I wandered through three or four long silver canvasses of Elvis in a cowboy get-up, each unique due to differences in the pressing of color. Apparently when Elizabeth Taylor was younger, she was all the rage that Angelina Jolie is currently, and Warhol used her likeness from movies as well, in staggering canvasses that had sixteen or more of the same image soaked in varying shades of blue. The facial collage of Jackie O lacked color, but the placement of her sad moment next to a happier photo were full of the mischief that Warhol was going for, the juxtaposition of who people are and how we remember them.
I also quite enjoyed the empty spaces on the wall between pieces being filled by short Warhol-esque quips, like, "Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job." The two or three viewing stations for Warhol's "movies" was also an interesting inclusion, though did little to elucidate the work shown in the exhibit, and merely provided entertainment. However there was a small room in the exhibit that shows Warhol's fascination with faces, as he aims the camera on two dozen people (some famous, some not) and records their movements and anxiety during a very long take.
In the end, and after much consideration, I know I learned a lot about how Warhol developed his work, the many tries it took to reach the outrageous face of "Turquoise Marilyn" but this exhibit could have benefitted from a more apt title; a suggestion: ANDY WARHOL/BEFORE THE SUPERNOVA: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters,1962-1964.
On an entirely different, though not completely unrelated, note a startling look at the face of evil and its ability to hide among us took me completely by surprise. The exhibit HIM at the MCA is probably the most minimalist exhibit I've seen in some time, though the work itself is very complicated and detailed. Read more: HIM at MCA.
HIT Musuem of Contemporary Art 220 East Chicago Avenue on a Tuesday.