25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy, Ca. 1954 [Written by Charles

25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy, ca. 1954 [written by Charles Lisanby; printed by Semour Berlin] bound artist’s book with 36 pages and 18 plates offset prints on paper with hand coloring Gift of Richard F. Holmes, Class of 1946 95.18.4 25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy is one of Warhol’s first promotional books from his years as a commercial artist. The drawings reveal the telltale blotted line technique characteristic of his early graphic work. Warhol used such a line to give his drawings a “printed” feel, and many works were later serially reproduced via offset lithography. In this book, each sketch is accompanied by the name “Sam,” written, not in the artist’s hand, but in the distinctive, whimsical script of Warhol’s mother, Julia. Originally from Slovinia, Warhol’s mother knew little English and when she would painstakingly copy the text Andy asked her to write, she occasionally dropped letters or made misspellings. “Name” in the book’s title is an instance of this kind of accidental elision. Warhol had this book printed and bound and then enlisted friends to help hand color them. Following 25 Cats Name Sam, Warhol created The Gold Book (ca. 1956), a collection of blotted line drawings of friends, flowers, and shoes, on gold paper (inspired by the gold lacquer work he had seen during a trip to Bangkok). Then Warhol composed In the Bottom of My Garden (ca. 1956) replete with slightly suspect cherubs, followed by Wild Raspberries (ca. 1959), a joke cookbook with Suzie Frankfurt’s recipes. (Courtesy, Andreas Brown, Gotham Book Mart, 1971) Andy Warhol and Suzie Frankfurt Wild Raspberries, ca.1959 bound artist’s book with 40 pages and 18 plates offset prints on paper with hand coloring and tissue overlays Gift of Richard F. Holmes, Class of 1946 95.18.8 Like all good social art, Wild Raspberries is more than just a series of vivid images, and like all good cookbooks, it offers more than just recipes. This oversized book is impossible to understand apart from the culture that gave rise to it: the world of New York high society in the 1950s. A collaboration among Warhol, interior designer Suzie Frankfurt, and Warhol’s mother Julia, Wild Raspberries parodies the lifestyles of the rich and famous by means of outlandish recipes. “Continental dining” was all the rage in the 1950s, and any sophisticate worth her mink was expected to be conversant with European, especially French, food. Cookbooks of the era were often pretentious, and Wild Raspberries spoofs the genre in its call for such rarified ingredients as plover’s egg and cock’s kidneys. At the same time, the book mocks the author’s own pretensions, especially Warhol’s penchant for celebrity. Sprinkled throughout the text are references to Cecil Beaton, Princess Grace, and Greta Garbo. The recipes themselves provide an A list of purveyors of food to the social elite: For “piglet,” Warhol and Frankfurt recommended sending the chauffeur in his Cadillac to pick up a forty-pound suckling pig at Trader Vic’s. (Courtesy, Professor Darra Goldstein, 2006) Jackie, 1964 synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas Partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. and museum purchase from the John B. Turner ‘24 Memorial Fund and Karl E. Weston Memorial Fund 95.11.1 & 2; 94.15.2 & 1 Warhol’s artistic exploration of images of Jacqueline Kennedy began in 1964, one year after the death of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. Jackie was a celebrity in her own right, ubiquitous in the media and beloved by the public. In his series of portraits of Jackie, the artist examines the relationship between public and private life, manipulating famous source images for the First Lady before and after the historic tragedy. The photographic juxtaposition of Jackie smiling and weeping highlights the public nature of this iconic figure’s private struggle. In Jackie, as in many of Warhol’s pieces, he appropriates and alters easily recognizable photographs. The source photos are so famous that they are comprehensible even when only vestiges of the originals remain. Images of Jackie at the assassination, funeral, and Vice-President Johnson’s swearing-in were shown with such repetition in print and on television that the line between Jackie’s mourning and the public’s mourning became blurred. The multiplication of Jackie’s portraits mimics the media’s repetitive, omnipresent use of her images in magazines and comments on the public display of private grief. (Courtesy, Meredith Sanger-Katz, 2006) Jackie One (silver), 1966 silkscreen on paper Gift of Richard F. Holmes, Class of 1946 M.2005.17.5 Flash - November 22, 1963, 1968 screenprint and teletype on paper Museum purchase, Karl E. Weston Memorial Fund M.2002.10.1.A-B; M.2002.10.2.A-B Five years after the assassination of President John F, Kennedy, Warhol created Flash – November 22, 1963, a series of silkscreens matched with teletype text that narrate the four days between President Kennedy’s assassination and his funeral. Through distortion, bold colors, and image layering, Warhol created a suite that not only expresses the collective trauma of the events of those four days, but also comments on the media’s manipulation of public opinion. from A la recherche du shoe perdu, with poems by Ralph Pomeroy, 1955 offset lithographs on paper with hand coloring Gift of Richard F. Holmes, Class of 1946 M.2005.17.31. A - O top row, right to left In Her Sweet Little Alice Blue Shoes Shoe Fly Baby Any One for Shoes? I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Shoes Shoe of the Evening, Beautiful Shoe My Shoe Is Your Shoe Dial M for Shoe bottom row, right to left Uncle Sam Wants Shoe! When I’m Calling Shoe See a Shoe and Pick It Up and All Day Long You’ll Have Good Luck Sunset and Evening Shoe The Autobiography of Alice B. Shoe Beauty Is Shoe, Shoe Beauty… You Can Lead a Shoe to Water But You Can’t Make It Drink In the 1950s, Warhol’s artistic interests included his environment; his jobs: his friends; flowers; butterflies; cats; people, young and old; and shoes, shoes, and more shoes. He produced a series of outrageous and bedazzling images of high-heeled glamour – from spikes to boots to mules – that have since become some of his most iconic imagery. Although the drawings were designed for advertisements, they were playfully personalized to capture the essence of celebrities’ personalities. Evident again is the artist’s ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. (Courtesy, Andreas Brown, Gotham Book Mart, 1971) Screenprinting Warhol was one of the first artists to use screenprinting. He remarked, In August 1962 I started doing silkscreens. I wanted something stronger that gave more of an assembly line effect. With silkscreening you pick up a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll the ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was so simple – quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. My first experiments with screens were heads of Troy Donahue and Warren Beatty, and then when Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face – the first Marilyns. Liz, 1965 color silkscreen on paper Museum purchase, Ruth Sabin Weston Fund 73.52 Throughout his printmaking career, Warhol exploited the popular images of superstars such as Marilyn, Jackie, and Liz. For Warhol, Elizabeth Taylor was much more than just a celebrated actress. She was a goddess of the silver screen, and the embodiment of a life of luxury. As Warhol once said, It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor’s finger. There are many versions of Liz, all based on the same photograph but printed in different color combinations on different papers and canvas. The first print version was printed commercially in three colors under the direction of Leo Castelli and signed by Warhol in 1964. This four-color version was screened in the summer of 1965. Pop Art The Pop Art movement was largely a British and American cultural phenomenon of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Pop Art works were characterized by the portrayal of any and all aspects of popular culture that had a powerful impact on contemporary life; its iconography – taken from television, comic books, movie magazines, and all forms of advertising – was presented emphatically and objectively and by means of the precise commercial techniques used by the media from which the images were initially borrowed. Pop represented an attempt to return to a more objective universally acceptable form of art after the dominance in both the U.S. and Europe of the highly personal Abstract Expressionist movement. Its effects – including its destruction of the boundary between “high” and “low” art – have continued to be powerfully felt throughout the visual arts to the present day. [Encyclopedia Britannica] Andy Warhol’s Index Book, 1967 books [pre-publication “dummys”] Gift of Richard F. Holmes, Class of 1946 95.18.9. A -D Kiss, 1966 silkscreen ink on plexiglas with metal stand Gift of Richard F. Holmes, Class of 1946 M.2005.17.29 Warhol was one of the most important and provocative filmmakers in New York during the early 1960s and early 1970s. His influence can still be found in Hollywood mainstream film, which took from his work realism and sexual explicitness, and in experimental film, which reworked his long-take, fixed camera aesthetic.

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