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Andy Warhol

Early Hand-Painted Works

September 22–October 22, 2005
980 Madison Avenue, New York

Andy Warhol, Storm Door (1), 1961 Casein and oil paint on linen, 46 × 42 inches (116.8 × 106.7 cm)

Andy Warhol, Storm Door (1), 1961

Casein and oil paint on linen, 46 × 42 inches (116.8 × 106.7 cm)

Andy Warhol, False Plate, 1961 Water-base paint on cotton, 36 × 44 ¾ inches (91.4 × 113.7 cm)

Andy Warhol, False Plate, 1961

Water-base paint on cotton, 36 × 44 ¾ inches (91.4 × 113.7 cm)

Andy Warhol, Red Airmail Stamp, 1962 Acrylic and pencil on linen, 6 × 6 inches (15.2 × 15.2 cm)

Andy Warhol, Red Airmail Stamp, 1962

Acrylic and pencil on linen, 6 × 6 inches (15.2 × 15.2 cm)

About

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce "Andy Warhol: Early Hand-Painted Works." This exhibition highlights the hand-painted works created by the artist between 1960 and 1962. These works are crucial to the understanding of the artist's later silk-screened paintings.

Warhol's work from the early sixties solidified his reputation as a Pop artist in the New York art world, eclipsing his former reputation as a magazine illustrator. The 1960s paintings represent classic examples of Warhol's earliest appropriations of popular culture, with their sources including iconic comic strips and black-and-white advertisements featured in the daily papers. Among his first serial compositions, the Campbell's Soup "portraits" begun in 1961 suggest no perceptible expression of originality. For Warhol, drama was in the everyday, and he masterfully glamorized the banality of commercial America.

The earliest works represented in the exhibition, including "Superman" and "False Plate," both completed in 1961, were painted entirely freehand. However, from 1962 onward, Warhol frequently projected images from printed media, traced them in pencil onto canvas, and then painted over his outlines. It was through this method that he eventually arrived at the silk-screening process.

A fully illustrated catalogue featuring an interview between Mark Francis and Ivan Karp will accompany the exhibition.

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.