Image Gallery

In 1972, the architectural firm Johnson & Burgee commissioned Warhol to create a series of sunset prints to decorate the Hotel Marquette in Minneapolis. The resulting 632 prints, each one different and unique, exemplify Warhol’s utilization of the mechanized screen printing process, his obsessive production, and his fearless, sometimes counterintuitive, yet always dazzling color combinations. Also referred to as silkscreens or serigraphs, screen prints are created by stretching a porous material over a frame, blocking out portions using a stencil or a grease-like liquid ground, then forcing ink through the permeable spaces to create an image. The process can be repeated with multiple screens to create additional layers of ink.

Warhol’s Sunset prints were created using only three screens. One screen formed the sun, another the sinuous bands of background color, and the third a single-color overlaying dot pattern. By adjusting the color combinations of ink and the registration (the positioning of the screen in relation to already applied layers), Warhol created an astounding number of unique color patterns. This series is widely considered one of Warhol’s most expressive projects. In some Sunset prints, the sun glows red-orange, almost blinding. In others, muted purples and greens dominate the color palette. Of these prints, 472 were used to decorate the hotel, while 160 were sold in portfolios of four. This print, likely a trial proof, was in Warhol’s possession at the time of his death in 1987.

Andy Warhol, prodigy of American Pop Art, was born Andrew Warhola in 1928. As a child, he suffered from a rare neurological disorder typified by uncontrollable movements, requiring him to miss school frequently. He escaped boredom during these times through comic books and magazines, immersing himself in the worlds of both heroes and Hollywood glamour. From these publications, he made paper cutouts of advertisements and photographs. This childhood hobby likely inspired his distinctive silkscreen technique—the repetitive recreation of emblematic figures and familiar products for a consumer-driven and celebrity-obsessed audience.

The themes of repetition, celebrity, and glamour became synonymous with Warhol, not only in his screen prints, but also in his documentation of life. The photograph at the right, Table, encapsulates these themes in a single frame. The composition revolves around the repeated table settings, the reflection of the camera’s flash, and the empty chairs holding the promise of prominent and glamorous event attendees.

The screen print of Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland comes from Warhol’s Reigning Queens series, which also included portraits of Queen Elizabeth II of England, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and Queen Magrethe II of Denmark. Warhol based the images on existing photographs of the queens, but used abstract shapes and large blocks of color to achieve a collaged effect in a screen print medium. He enhanced the effect by adding diamond dust, tiny bits of cut glass designed to catch and reflect light, to the surface layer of ink. This sparkle also lends a sense of opulence to the queens, each of whom ruled in her own right rather than through a male relative.

Jon Gould was one of Warhol’s few great loves. When they met in 1980, Gould was a Paramount Pictures executive and only 27 years old. Friends described him as a man living two lives, one by himself in Los Angeles, the other in New York with Warhol, and with two personas, straight or gay, awkward or possessing an undeniable swagger, depending on the circumstances. Warhol’s diary references Gould repeatedly, including his excited anticipation of dates and his tangible bleakness when their plans fell through. He desperately sought to impress Gould by changing his clothing and physical appearance and treating him to glamorous parties at Studio 54.

The photograph on the right shows Gould in conversation with Peter Wise, a photo archivist and Warhol’s friend and colleague. The shot captures an unfettered moment of connection, Gould through Warhol’s eyes. Unabashedly in love and a consummate observer, Warhol took photographs of Gould at every chance. He is the most photographed subject in Warhol’s entire body of work.

Despite the financial hardships of his Depression era youth, Warhol’s parents, Andrej and Julia, bought his first camera at the age of eight. This gift would lead to a lifetime of observing and documenting his surroundings and relationships that influenced his compositional sense and inspired the working method for some of his most well-known prints. For example, the photograph at the left reveals his affinity for the repetition of shapes, here in the form of stacked boxes. This type of composition also appears in his many of his finished portraits, such as this vivid screen print of German artist Joseph Beuys.

Warhol first met Beuys in 1979 at an art opening in Düsseldorf, Germany. Mere moments after meeting Beuys, Warhol asked to photograph him. Perhaps because of the public setting, Warhol only took one shot of Beuys, rather than his typical multitude of poses per subject (like the Polaroids of artist Sandro Chia in the center case). The photograph of Beuys, which served as a “sketch,” became the basis for a series of screen print portraits with many variations. Some held only a single, monochromatic image of Beuys. Others, like this one, bear Warhol’s recognizable multiplicity of brightly-colored images. In a nod to Beuys’ own preferred materials, one of which was felt, Warhol covered this portrait of the artist with rayon flocking.

Warhol’s humorous diary entry from a later encounter with Beuys demonstrates both his respect for the artist and his openness regarding what constitutes finished work of art.

Sunday, March 8, 1981 Düsseldorf—“We had breakfast with Joseph Beuys, he insisted that I come to his house and see his studio and the way he lives and have tea and cake, it was really nice. He gave me a work of art which was two bottles of effervescent water which ended up exploding in my suitcase and damaging everything I have, so I can’t open the box now, because I don’t know if it’s a work of art anymore or just broken bottles. So if he comes to New York I’ve got to get him to come sign the box because it’s just a real muck.”

In 1986, Andy Warhol produced Cowboys and Indians, a series of ten prints depicting legendary figures of the American West—General Custer, pop culture’s eternal cowboy John Wayne, and Geronimo—along with a romanticized portrait of a Native American mother and child and renderings of Native American objects, including a Northwest Coast mask and a Plains Indian shield. Annie Oakley, a sharpshooter in Buffalo Bill Cody’s live performance troupe, was also included. Like other portraits in the series, the image of Annie Oakley was based on a popular photograph, in this case one that had originally appeared as an advertisement for Buffalo Bill’s German tour.

To create Cowboys and Indians, Warhol and his Factory studio assistants produced 36 trial proofs of 14 images in various colors, tonalities, and positions. From these, Warhol selected his favorite versions of the 10 images that constituted the final series and ran an edition (a series of multiple originals) of 250 prints for each image. The Annie Oakley screen print at left was included in the edition, while the print at the right is an unfinished or perhaps discarded version that remained in Warhol’s possession. The editioned print is replete with detail, from the inticate medals pinned to Oakley’s shirt to her individual strands of hair. The unfinished print displays fewer layers of ink than the finished version, most obviously lacking Warhol’s characteristic photo reproduction layer. The result is striking. Simple outlines form Oakley’s face and subtly suggest the medals on her shirt, allowing the viewer to fill in detail or simply appreciate the unrestrained, yet minimalistic, composition of color and line.

The screen prints and photographs seen here illustrate the breadth of Warhol’s documentation of American culture, from a surreptitious beach shot to the glitz of the high-fashion runway to his more reflective late works that forefront romanticized prototypes of the American West.
From the original 36 trial proofs of the Cowboys and Indians portfolio, comprised of 14 images each, Warhol chose only 10 for his final portfolio. Buffalo Nickel and Sitting Bull, seen here, were two of the four images removed. Buffalo Nickel depicts the reverse of the coin designed by sculptor James Earle Fraser and struck by the US Mint from 1913-1938. The coin was also known as the Indian Head nickel because of the profile image of a Native American seen on the coin’s face.

The Latin phrase e pluribus unum (“out of many, one”), appears on the coin and in the screen print. The motto is generally understood as representing the many states that form the United States of America or, alternately, many different people united under one flag. The phrase takes on a complicated, tragic meaning when applied to a coin that commemorates Native Americans, who suffered horrific loss of life during the late nineteenth-century American westward expansion. Likewise, the buffalo that had once been ubiquitous to the North American plains had been hunted to near extinction by the time the coin was produced.

The screen print of Sitting Bull was based on a well-known 1881 photograph of the Hunkapapa Lakota Sioux chief taken by Orlando Scott Goff in Bismarck, North Dakota. In 1876, Sitting Bull led a united confederation of Lakota tribes to defeat General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn. He was forced to surrender several years later after his forces were nearly decimated by starvation and the inhospitable conditions of the Saskatchewan territory to which they fled in the years following the battle. This photograph was taken shortly after his surrender.
It has been argued that depicting Native American leaders in the style of Pop Art trivialized their resistance to American expansion and the government’s appropriation of lands previously held by indigenous groups. While Warhol himself never made a definitive statement on Native American activism, his Cowboys and Indians series encourages the viewer to consider the dissonance created by pairing images of Native American leaders with celebrity heroes like John Wayne and Annie Oakley.

Andy Warhol purchased a Polaroid Big Shot camera around 1970 and used it to capture the images that would be the starting point for much of his work until the end of his life. The photographs, like these of Italian artist Sandro Chia, served as “sketches” for Warhol’s iconic silkscreen portraits. Warhol recounts an encounter between himself, Sandro Chia, and Warhol’s Factory assistant Benjamin Liu that took place on Thursday, June 16, 1983—
“…Benjamin said he looked in Chia’s eyes and that they were “wild eyes.” And afterwards I said to Benjamin, “Well what do you mean?” I said, “Look into my eyes and what do you see?” And Benjamin said, “Troubled eyes.” I said, “Oh who do you think you are?”

This artist’s book, Andy Warhol’s Index (Book), allows another glimpse into Warhol’s working methods. The book is opened to a photograph that captures an intimate moment of the artist at work, amidst row upon row of unfinished silkscreens, feverishly working toward the perfect print.
The detail photograph of Warhol at the right, implies that he viewed himself as a master printmaker in the tradition of Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528), the printmaking great of the Northern Renaissance. Dürer’s monogram, a combination of his initials, A and D, appears at bottom right. Warhol’s unusual jacket offers a second, subtler nod to Dürer. Not only indicative of Warhol’s fashion-forward style, the jacket’s shredded sleeves and high collar also recall the traditional attire of a landsknecht, a type of sixteenth-century German mercenary frequently depicted by Dürer.