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Andy Warhol

Diamond Dust Shoes

September 23–October 30, 1999
980 Madison Avenue, New York

Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, 1980–81 Synthetic polymer paint, silkscreen ink and diamond dust on canvas, 90 × 70 inches (228.6 × 177.8 cm)

Andy Warhol, Diamond Dust Shoes, 1980–81

Synthetic polymer paint, silkscreen ink and diamond dust on canvas, 90 × 70 inches (228.6 × 177.8 cm)

About

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce the most complete presentation yet of Andy Warhol's Diamond Dust Shoe paintings, the spectacular series of works created in 1980.

The image of women's shoes is one of Warhol's primary motifs, as one can see from its prominence in his work from 1955 until his foray into Pop images around 1960. Already a stylish and successful commercial artist in 1955, Warhol was offered the I. Miller account by Geraldine Stutz. Immediately, his whimsical and inventive shoe drawings became the talk of the town, as well as his personal calling card. He created shoe drawings as gifts to friends and influential contacts, mounted an exhibition of gold shoe drawings at the Bodley Gallery in 1957, and even created an illustrated book, Ã la Recherche du Shoe Perdu, which he passed around in New York to publicize himself and his work. Because the magazines paid him a fixed fee for each drawing of a shoe, he loved counting every new batch to see exactly how much money he would be getting. Shoes equaled cash.

Not only did Warhol associate shoes with his heightened success, but he also published and exhibited an acclaimed series of drawings wherein each shoe was dubbed with the name of a celebrity – Mae West, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Truman Capote, and James Dean. By the end of the 1950s, the shoe was Warhol's most prominent personal claim to fame as well as his symbol for the sexiness, glamour and magic of the stardom that he adored.

It was not until 1980 that Warhol returned with force to the motif, setting multi-colored combinations of women's shoes against black backgrounds and covering the surface with sparkling "diamond dust." Most important, Warhol had recently embarked on his magnificent Retrospective Paintings that combined major motifs from his Pop career – a Campbell's Soup Can silk-screened along with Marilyn, Mao, Corn Flakes boxes, and the like. In this retrospective frame of mind, it is no surprise that he reclaimed the motif of the shoe, the early embodiment of his dreams and achievement of fame. So, like all of his greatest images, the shoe carries a note of the self-portrait.

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Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol at Paris Apartment Window, 1981

In Conversation
Christopher Makos and Jessica Beck

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. To celebrate the occasion, Makos met with Gagosian director Jessica Beck to speak about his friendship with Warhol and the joy of the unexpected.

Jessica Beck

Andy Warhol: Silver Screen

In this video, Jessica Beck, director at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, sits down to discuss the three early paintings by Andy Warhol from 1963 featured in the exhibition Andy Warhol: Silver Screen, at Gagosian in Paris.

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.