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Andy Warhol

Camouflage Paintings

January 30–February 12, 1999
Beverly Hills

Andy Warhol, Camouflage, 1986 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 12 × 10 inches (30.5 × 25.4 cm)

Andy Warhol, Camouflage, 1986

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 12 × 10 inches (30.5 × 25.4 cm)

Andy Warhol, Camouflage, 1986 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 80 × 76 inches (203.2 × 193 cm)

Andy Warhol, Camouflage, 1986

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 80 × 76 inches (203.2 × 193 cm)

Andy Warhol, Camouflage, 1986 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 50 × 198 inches (127 × 502.9 cm)

Andy Warhol, Camouflage, 1986

Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 50 × 198 inches (127 × 502.9 cm)

About

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce a major exhibition of Andy Warhol's Camouflage Paintings of 1986. One of the last serial groups of paintings Warhol completed before his death in 1987, these paintings are inspired by the military motif of camouflage.

The Camouflage Paintings confront issues of pattern and design within the context of the New York School of Abstraction. Using an image which is itself a simplification of nature, Warhol addresses the history of landscape painting. As Thomas Kellein puts this irony in historical perspective for the introduction to his seminal exhibition "Warhol Abstracts":

With the Camouflages, a military pattern that helped hide weapons of war in the landscape was brought into play for an abstract, informal flood of paintings. Warhol expanded the vegetable like effect of leaf-shaped sprigs and islands, first onto square, then onto rectangular formats, until the "all over" ideal of the Abstract Expressionists had been brought back to its familiar origin: the water lily paintings of Claude Monet. This historically burdened design was brightened and lightened by colors to such an extent that we stand in front of some spiritually emphatic testimony to abstract painting, ready to lose ourselves in the Camouflages as in a landscape.

A fully illustrated catalogue with texts by Brenda Richardson and Bob Colacello will accompany the exhibition.

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.