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Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, Piss Painting, 1978 Urine on gesso on canvas, 78 × 194 inches (198.1 × 492.8 cm)

Andy Warhol, Piss Painting, 1978

Urine on gesso on canvas, 78 × 194 inches (198.1 × 492.8 cm)

Andy Warhol, Silver Clouds, 1966 Silver mylar, helium, and air, Dimensions variable

Andy Warhol, Silver Clouds, 1966

Silver mylar, helium, and air, Dimensions variable

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1964 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 20 × 16 inches (50.8 × 40.6 cm)

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1964

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 20 × 16 inches (50.8 × 40.6 cm)

About

Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?
—Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol’s (1928–1987) art encapsulates the 1960s through the 1980s in New York. By imitating the familiar aesthetics of mass media, advertising, and celebrity culture, Warhol blurred the boundaries between his work and the world that inspired it, producing images that have become as pervasive as their sources.

Warhol grew up in a working-class suburb of Pittsburgh. His parents were Slovak immigrants, and he was the only member of his family to attend college. He entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1945, where he majored in pictorial design. After graduation, he moved to New York with fellow student Philip Pearlstein and found steady work as a commercial illustrator at several magazines, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and the New Yorker. Throughout the 1950s Warhol enjoyed a successful career as a commercial artist, winning several commendations from the Art Directors Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. He had his first solo exhibition at the Hugo Gallery in 1952, showing drawings based on the writings of Truman Capote; three years later his work was included in a group show at the Museum of Modern Art for the first time.

The year 1960 marked a turning point in Warhol’s prolific career. He painted his first works based on comics and advertisements, enlarging and transferring the source images onto canvas using a projector. In 1961 Warhol showed these hand-painted works, including Little King (1961) and Saturday’s Popeye (1961), in a window display at the department store Bonwit Teller; in 1962 he painted his famous Campbell’s Soup Cans, thirty-two separate canvases, each depicting a canned soup of a different flavor. Soon after, Warhol began to borrow not only the subject matter of printed media, but the technology as well. Incorporating the silkscreen technique, he created grids of stamps, Coca-Cola bottles, shipping and handling labels, dollar bills, coffee labels, and more, breaking down the images to their basic graphic components.

In 1963 Warhol established a studio on East 47th Street, which became known as the Factory and served as a cultural hub for artists, models, performers, and socialites. His inner circle comprised his Superstars, who played a major role in both his work and his social life. Interested in the production of fame, Warhol began to screen-print images of celebrities and public figures, from Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley to Jackie Kennedy and Mao Zedong. Expanding his practice, as well as his cultural influence, he produced records (The Velvet Underground & Nico), started a magazine (Interview), and made avant-garde films, such as Chelsea Girls (1966), Blow Job (1964), and Empire (1964), which have become classics of the underground genre.

Following a close run-in with death when Valerie Solanas shot him in 1968, Warhol entered a more subdued, isolated period, working primarily on a commissioned basis and painting portraits for various patrons, while also revisiting themes from his earlier work. He then began to pursue a new interest in abstraction, first with his Oxidations (1977–78), made by allowing friends and acquaintances to urinate on canvases painted with metallic pigments, and later with his Rorschach (1984) and Camouflage (1986) paintings.

By the early 1980s Warhol was producing work across media with a renewed vigor, hosting half-hour programs on MTV, publishing books, and collaborating with younger artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring. His abstract series coincided with large-scale works that looked back at masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci: he screen-printed images of the Mona Lisa (1503) and created several monumental canvases of The Last Supper (1495–98). Warhol’s ability to seamlessly combine art historical reference, abstract patterns, and mass media set new standards for the role of the artist, permanently blurring the lines between commercial and fine art.

Alexander Calder poster for McGovern, 1972, lithograph

The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters

Against the backdrop of the 2020 US presidential election, historian Hal Wert takes us through the artistic and political evolution of American campaign posters, from their origin in 1844 to the present. In an interview with Quarterly editor Gillian Jakab, Wert highlights an array of landmark posters and the artists who made them.

Allen Midgette in front of the Chelsea Hotel, New York, 2000. Photo: Rita Barros

I’ll Be Your Mirror: Allen Midgette

Raymond Foye speaks with the actor who impersonated Andy Warhol during the great Warhol lecture hoax in the late 1960s. The two also discuss Midgette’s earlier film career in Italy and the difficulty of performing in a Warhol film.

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait with Skull, 1977, Polaroid Polacolor Type 108, 4 ¼ × 3 ⅜ inches (10.8 × 8.6 cm). The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Andy Warhol: From the Polaroid and Back Again

Jessica Beck, the Milton Fine Curator of Art at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, considers the artist’s career-spanning use of Polaroid photography as part of his more expansive practice.

Andy Warhol catalogue. Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1965.

Book Corner
On Collecting with Norman Diekman

Rare-book expert Douglas Flamm speaks with designer Norman Diekman about his unique collection of books on art and architecture. Diekman describes his first plunge into book collecting, the history behind it, and the way his passion for collecting grew.

Andy Warhol cover design for the magazine Aspen 1, no. 3.

Artists’ Magazines

Gwen Allen recounts her discovery of cutting-edge artists’ magazines from the 1960s and 1970s and explores the roots and implications of these singular publications.

Anselm Kiefer, Volkszählung (Census), 1991, steel, lead, glass, peas, and photographs, 163 ⅜ × 224 ½ × 315 inches (4.1 × 5.7 × 8 m)/

Cast of Characters

James Lawrence explores how contemporary artists have grappled with the subject of the library.

Cover of the Winter 2019 Gagosian Quarterly, featuring a selection from a black-and-white Christopher Wool photograph

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2019

The Winter 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a selection from Christopher Wool’s Westtexaspsychosculpture series on its cover.

Still from video Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt

Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt

Jenny Saville reveals the process behind her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt’s masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles.

Andy Warhol: Everything Is Good

Andy Warhol: Everything Is Good

Richard Hell writes about the “transcendentally camp” Pop artist, portraitist of daily life.

Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2019

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2019

The Spring 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Red Pot with Lute Player #2 by Jonas Wood on its cover.

Claude Picasso and John Richardson

In Conversation
Claude Picasso and John Richardson

Picasso biographer Sir John Richardson sits down with Claude Picasso to discuss Claude’s photography, his enjoyment of vintage car racing, and the future of scholarship related to his father, Pablo Picasso.

Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2018

Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2018

The Winter 2018 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available. Our cover this issue comes from High Times, a new body of work by Richard Prince.

Fairs, Events & Announcements

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2023. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Installation

Andy Warhol’s Insiders

May 25–July 8, 2023
Gagosian Shop, London

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade is a group exhibition and shop takeover that feature works by Warhol and portraits of the artist by friends and collaborators including photographers Ronnie Cutrone, Michael Halsband, Christopher Makos, and Billy Name. The Shop is presenting a selection of Warhol prints, publications, merchandise, and rare books and posters, including prints from his Ladies and Gentlemen portfolio (1975) and Richard Bernstein’s original collages for the covers of Interview, alongside signed copies of the magazine.

Andy Warhol’s Insiders reveals the collaborative diversity of Warhol’s practice, and his love of not only working behind the scenes, but also posing for the camera. The exhibition coincides with the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery, London, on June 22.

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2023. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2023. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Screening and Talk

Andrew Rossi and Jessica Beck
On Andy Warhol

Monday, June 26, 2023, 7pm
Burlington Arcade, London

Join Gagosian for a film screening and conversation in conjunction with Andy Warhol’s Insiders, a group exhibition and takeover of the Gagosian Shop, London, featuring works by Warhol and portraits of the artist by friends and collaborators. The evening will begin with a screening of an episode of The Andy Warhol Diaries, a six-part series written and directed by Andrew Rossi that takes an in-depth look at the artist’s life and career. Following the screening, Rossi and Gagosian director Jessica Beck, formerly of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, will discuss the diversity of Warhol’s practice, and his love of not only working behind the scenes, but also posing for the camera.

Register

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2023. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Stanley Whitney, Worldly Hopes, 2023 © Stanley Whitney

Art Fair

Art Basel 2023

June 15–18, 2022, Hall 2, booth B15
Messe Basel
artbasel.com

Gagosian is pleased to participate in Art Basel 2023 with modern and contemporary works by gallery artists, as well as special entries in the Unlimited and Parcours sections of the fair.

Gagosian’s presentation in the main section of Art Basel represents the breadth and diversity of the gallery’s programming through work by artists including John Currin, Andreas Gursky, Tetsuya Ishida, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Rick Lowe, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Sarah Sze, Anna Weyant, Rachel Whiteread, Stanley Whitney, and Jordan Wolfson. Also featured are iconic works by Willem de Kooning, Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol.

Stanley Whitney, Worldly Hopes, 2023 © Stanley Whitney

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Museum Exhibitions

Installation view, The Whitney’s Collection: Selections from 1900 to 1965, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June 28, 2019–May 2022. Artwork, left to right: © 2020 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Norman Lewis; © 2020 The Franz Kline Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Ron Amstutz

On View

The Whitney’s Collection
Selections from 1900 to 1965

Opened June 28, 2019
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
whitney.org

This exhibition of more than 120 works, drawn entirely from the Whitney’s collection, is inspired by the founding history of the museum. The Whitney was established in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to champion the work of living American artists. A sculptor and a patron, Whitney recognized both the importance of contemporary American art and the need to support the artists who made it. The collection she assembled foregrounds how artists uniquely reveal the complexity and beauty of American life. Work by Jay DeFeo, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann is included.

Installation view, The Whitney’s Collection: Selections from 1900 to 1965, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June 28, 2019–May 2022. Artwork, left to right: © 2020 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Norman Lewis; © 2020 The Franz Kline Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Ron Amstutz

Cy Twombly, Untitled (Roses), 2008, Museum Brandhorst, Munich © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Nicole Williams

On View

La vie en rose
Brueghel, Monet, Twombly

Through October 22, 2023
Museum Brandhorst, Munich
www.museum-brandhorst.de

La vie en rose is centered around Cy Twombly’s Untitled (Roses), a series of six paintings created for a room in Museum Brandhorst, and on permanent display in Munich since 2009. Taking Twombly’s poetic examination of death, freedom, isolation, and eroticism as its starting point, the exhibition brings together works by various artists who have engaged with floral subjects, including Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (1915) and Andy Warhol’s Flowers (1965). The show aims to reveal the complex, even contradictory motives that have inspired artists over the centuries to take on this subject matter.

Cy Twombly, Untitled (Roses), 2008, Museum Brandhorst, Munich © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo: Nicole Williams

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Big Bertha, 2015 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn

On View

X
A Decade of Collecting, 2012–2022

Through December 21, 2023
Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
sheldonartmuseum.org

X: A Decade of Collecting, 2012–2022 is a survey of artworks acquired for the Sheldon Museum of Art’s collection over the past decade. The chosen works demonstrate the breadth of collecting efforts and are a modest representation of the approximately 1,875 pieces that have entered the museum’s holdings since 2012. The exhibition seeks to present a snapshot of how the collection continues to evolve. Work by Richard Avedon, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Andy Warhol, and Stanley Whitney is included.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Big Bertha, 2015 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, 2005 © Gregory Crewdson

Closed

Photography’s Last Century
The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection

February 17–May 21, 2023
Jepson Center, Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia
www.telfair.org

Photography’s Last Century celebrates the remarkable ascendancy of photography during the past hundred years, and Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee’s promised gift of over sixty photographs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where this exhibition originated. The collection is particularly notable for its breadth and depth of works by women artists, its sustained interest in the nude, and its focus on artists’ beginnings. Work by Gregory Crewdson, Andreas Gursky, Man Ray, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Whiteread is included. 

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, 2005 © Gregory Crewdson

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Press

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