Pop Art: Andy Warhol
Pop Art developed in the late 1950s when European ‘New realism’, which emphasized elements of mass culture, spread to the US. There, artists like Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol found inspiration in the mundane and ordinary – as Warhol said, ‘all the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried not to notice at all.’
Andy Warhol (American, 1928−1987)
Truck, 1985
Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board. Extra, out of the edition. Designated for research and educational purposes only. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
39 3/8” H x 39 3/9” W
Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2013.39.3
Already a successful commercial artist in New York in the 1950s, Andy Warhol achieved international fame in the 1960s for his Pop Art images of Campbell’s Soup cans and Hollywood celebrities. Saying that he wanted to “be a machine,” Warhol sought to remove the artist’s hand from the completed artwork: He based his images on existing photographs, employed commercial-grade silkscreens, and even asked studio assistants to make works on his behalf.
This image was part of a series of four screenprints of an eighteen-wheeler that Warhol created in association with the Bundesverband des Deutschen Güterfernverkehrs (National Association of German Goods Transportation Workers) to commemorate the Twentieth World Congress of International Road Transportation Union.
- Deanna Schreiber, '17
Andy Warhol (American, 1928−1987)
Reigning Queens: Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland, 1985
Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board. Extra, out of the edition. Designated for research and educational purposes only. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
39 3/8” H x 31 1/2” W
Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2013.39.1
Andy Warhol (American, 1928−1987)
Reigning Queens: Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland, 1985
Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board. Extra, out of the edition. Designated for research and educational purposes only. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
39 3/8” x 31 1/2”
Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2013.39.2
Reigning Queens was Warhol’s largest portfolio of prints. Created in 1985, it contains sixteen silkscreens of the four queens who ruled in the world at that time: Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland.
The images were based on official or media photographs of the queens, capturing the women as they were portrayed in the public eye and demonstrating Warhol’s interest in popular culture. Warhol even includes a possible camera flash reflection on the forehead and cheeks of Queen Ntombi and has added pink to her lips, suggesting makeup and enhancing her femininity.
The subject matter of the prints is typical for Warhol, reflecting his fascination with social hierarchy, with the queens representing a place at the apex of society.
- Emma Payne, '17
Andy Warhol (American, 1928−1987)
Sitting Bull, 1985
Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board. Extra, out of the edition. Designated for research and educational purposes only. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
36” H x 36” W
Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2013.39.6
This portrait is based on an archival photo of Sitting Bull (ca. 1831-1890), chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux. Warhol appropriated the image from an 1881 photograph by Orlando Scott Goff. The resulting silkscreen was meant to be a part of Warhol’s 1986 Cowboys and Indians series, but did not make the final cut. Known for his depiction of figures from popular culture, Warhol’s final portfolio of ten serigraphs includes portraits of George Custer, Annie Oakley, Geronimo, Teddy Roosevelt, and John Wayne. The series also includes Native American artifacts: Hopi Kachina dolls, a Plains Indian shield, and a Tlingit Northwest Coast mask.
Discovery of gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota led to increased Native American/US authority conflict, and ultimately sparked the Great Sioux wars of the 1870s, during which Sitting Bull led the Sioux resistance against the United States. The wars culminated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, when Sitting Bull defeated General George Custer. After spending several years in Canada, the Sioux chief ultimately surrendered to U.S. forces in 1881, and he and his people were forced to settle on a reservation in the Dakotas. That year, photographer Orlando Scott Goff took one of the first of many photographs of Sitting Bull, who became an iconic figure.
Sitting Bull is one of six screen prints gifted to W&L by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, which has been distributing photographs and screen prints to educational institutions since 1999.
- Peyton Bryant, '17
Andy Warhol (American, 1928−1987)Hans Christian Andersen, 1987
Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board. Extra, out of the edition. Designated for research and educational purposes only. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
39 3/8” H x 31 1/2” W
Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2013.39.4
Andy Warhol (American, 1928−1987)
Hans Christian Andersen, 1987
Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board. Extra, out of the edition. Designated for research and educational purposes only. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
39 3/8” H x 31 1/2” W
Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2013.39.5
Iconic pop artist Andy Warhol and world-renowned Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) both understood the value of appreciating art with a childlike simplicity and intensity. Warhol, inspired by Andersen’s fairytales, imbued that childlike energy in a series of silkscreens originally published in 1987 by Art Expo Denmark.
In addition to his fairytales, Andersen created paper cuttings, a traditional Scandinavian craft called psaligraphy. Long after his passing, children of friends still recalled watching him cut plain white paper to reveal an image thematically different from the the story he was recounting.
Warhol was a prominent modern artist in post-war America noted for his use of bold colors, pop culture iconography, and mass production. The year before his death, Warhol created two series of four screenprints in memory of Andersen, based on photographs of the author and his paper cuttings, possibly in homage to some lost childhood memory. Printed with minimal colors, these works lack the commercial gleam and mocking edge Warhol often infused into his work. These two windmill men may simply illutsrate Warhol’s revival of the happy art of a beloved popular writer.
- Iman Messado ’19, Summer 2018 Museum Intern
Note / PAH: while these two prints were not part of the original 2016 exhibition, they are part of the series of out of the edition screenprints donated to W&L by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., designated for research and educational purposes only. They are currently (2020) hanging in Leyburn Library in an exhibit curated as part of a summer museum intern project in 2018.