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Andy Warhol

Late Paintings

February 26–April 17, 2004
Beverly Hills

Andy Warhol, Be a Somebody with a Body (2 Times), c. 1985–86 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 116 × 212 inches (294.6 × 538.5 cm)

Andy Warhol, Be a Somebody with a Body (2 Times), c. 1985–86

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 116 × 212 inches (294.6 × 538.5 cm)

Andy Warhol, Repent and Sin No More (neg), 1985–86 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 80 × 72 inches (203.2 × 182.9 cm)

Andy Warhol, Repent and Sin No More (neg), 1985–86

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 80 × 72 inches (203.2 × 182.9 cm)

Andy Warhol, Art (pos), 1986 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 16 × 20 inches (40.6 × 50.8 cm)

Andy Warhol, Art (pos), 1986

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 16 × 20 inches (40.6 × 50.8 cm)

Andy Warhol, Mineola Motorcycle (pos), 1985–86 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 16 × 20 inches (40.6 × 50.8 cm)

Andy Warhol, Mineola Motorcycle (pos), 1985–86

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 16 × 20 inches (40.6 × 50.8 cm)

Andy Warhol, Camouflage Last Supper, 1986 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 80 ¾ × 305 ½ inches (205.1 × 776 cm)

Andy Warhol, Camouflage Last Supper, 1986

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 80 ¾ × 305 ½ inches (205.1 × 776 cm)

About

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of Andy Warhol's Late Paintings – primarily the stark black-and-white ad paintings from the mid-1980s.

For this group of works, Warhol returned to his scrapbooks of ads from the 1950s and chose those with hand painted illustrations and lettering. The works – which feature images that have been enlarged and screened on blank white canvases – are both brash and icy. While the images are made by hand, the paintings seem totally blank and disembodied.

In fact, the paintings are so emphatically dry in appearance they seem to suggest that, if pushed any farther, they might simply vanish. In short – to mimic one of the slogans – the paintings are just "one breath away" from returning to their abstract essence.

Around the same time, Warhol was making his Camouflage paintings – vivid designs that are really about the notion of making things disappear, and his black and white Rorschach works – inky blotches intended to communicate with "the other world" of our deepest psyche.

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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.