Skarstedt Gallery is pleased to present a selection of paintings and drawings from Andy Warhol’s series, Ladies and Gentlemen, created in 1975.
This exhibition is comprised of nineteen paintings and seven drawings and represents some of the most interesting portraits Warhol created while also depicting Warhol’s acute awareness of the modernizing and liberalizing world around him.
Unlike the portraits commissioned by socialites and celebrities, Warhol paid these sitters to pose in front of his camera. In a statement made by Vincent Fremont about the sitters he says, “Bob Colacello found most of them at a club called the Gilded Grape. After the photo session, I would hand the subjects a model release and a check and send them over to the bank.” The cross-dressers were invited to pose and dress as they wished while Warhol took their portraits with his Polaroid Big Shot camera, the same process he used with the Hollywood starlets and socialites. The photographs were then sent to a commercial silkscreen shop where they were transferred onto the silk or silk-like fabric and then returned to Warhol for printing. These paintings are glamorous and feminine, and mimic the celebrity status of his other portraits. To Warhol, the Ladies and Gentlemen were starlets but their ambiguity and anonymity veered these paintings away from the commerciality with which his work was once affiliated.
Where Warhol’s paintings are sometimes scrutinized for his aptitude in fine art, his drawings are a comprehensive display of his artistic talent. The seven on view are great examples of this seemingly “forgotten” talent. In another essay published in 2001, Vincent Fremont states, “Most people took Andy’s quote about wanting to be a machine with minimal human contact with his painting literally. This was one of the provocative conceptual thoughts he tossed out to see how people would react.”
Born in 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Warhol moved to New York City in 1949 where he spent the rest of his artistic career before his untimely death in 1987. He has been the subject of a myriad of national and international one-man gallery and museum exhibitions throughout his prolific career. In 1989, the Museum of Modern Art organized a major retrospective of his work and in 2001 Hernier Bastian curated a retrospective in Berlin, which traveled to the Tate, London and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Shortly after his death, the Warhol Foundation for the Arts was founded, at his request, in order to further the advancement of the visual arts. In 1994 the Carnagie Institute and the Dia Foundation for the Arts, along with the help of the Foundation, opened the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
For further information, please contact +1 212 737 2060 or info@skarstedt.com
This exhibition is comprised of nineteen paintings and seven drawings and represents some of the most interesting portraits Warhol created while also depicting Warhol’s acute awareness of the modernizing and liberalizing world around him.
Unlike the portraits commissioned by socialites and celebrities, Warhol paid these sitters to pose in front of his camera. In a statement made by Vincent Fremont about the sitters he says, “Bob Colacello found most of them at a club called the Gilded Grape. After the photo session, I would hand the subjects a model release and a check and send them over to the bank.” The cross-dressers were invited to pose and dress as they wished while Warhol took their portraits with his Polaroid Big Shot camera, the same process he used with the Hollywood starlets and socialites. The photographs were then sent to a commercial silkscreen shop where they were transferred onto the silk or silk-like fabric and then returned to Warhol for printing. These paintings are glamorous and feminine, and mimic the celebrity status of his other portraits. To Warhol, the Ladies and Gentlemen were starlets but their ambiguity and anonymity veered these paintings away from the commerciality with which his work was once affiliated.
Where Warhol’s paintings are sometimes scrutinized for his aptitude in fine art, his drawings are a comprehensive display of his artistic talent. The seven on view are great examples of this seemingly “forgotten” talent. In another essay published in 2001, Vincent Fremont states, “Most people took Andy’s quote about wanting to be a machine with minimal human contact with his painting literally. This was one of the provocative conceptual thoughts he tossed out to see how people would react.”
Born in 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Warhol moved to New York City in 1949 where he spent the rest of his artistic career before his untimely death in 1987. He has been the subject of a myriad of national and international one-man gallery and museum exhibitions throughout his prolific career. In 1989, the Museum of Modern Art organized a major retrospective of his work and in 2001 Hernier Bastian curated a retrospective in Berlin, which traveled to the Tate, London and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Shortly after his death, the Warhol Foundation for the Arts was founded, at his request, in order to further the advancement of the visual arts. In 1994 the Carnagie Institute and the Dia Foundation for the Arts, along with the help of the Foundation, opened the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
For further information, please contact +1 212 737 2060 or info@skarstedt.com