Andy Warhol

Description

To the general public, Andy Warhol is known as a painter of famous faces, from Liz and Marilyn and Jackie and Marlon to his own ever-changing self-portrait. Less known are the portraits he made throughout his career of socialites, art dealers, collectors, politicians, and a variety of contemporary cult figures, mostly commissioned work that helped finance Warhol’s many other artistic activities. This book is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of Warhol’s many portraits, including well-known icons as well as many works largely unknown even by avid Warhol followers. Included are more than 300 portraits made by Warhol from the early 1960s until his death in 1987, assembled as a face-book of the amazing cast of characters that populated Warhol’s fascinating, star-studded, and, at times, sordid world. As Warhol said, “I think everybody is my friend.” Included in this book is an introduction by gallerist Tony Shafrazi, who has a long history with the work of Andy Warhol, and essays by Warhol experts, established art historians, and critics Carter Ratcliff and Robert Rosenblum, who lend insight into one of the least fully known but nevertheless prolific aspects of Warhol’s endlessly fascinating career.

Tony Shafrazi is the director of the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York. He first met Andy Warhol in 1965 and started showing his work in the early 1980s.

Carter Ratcliff is a poet and art critic. His writings on art include monographs on Andy Warhol and John Singer Sargent, as well as The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art and Out of the Box: The Reinvention of Art 1965–1975.

Robert Rosenblum is Professor of Fine Arts at New York University and Stephen and Nan Swid Curator at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York City. He has written extensively on the work of Andy Warhol.

“Warhol fever is well and truly back. His endlessly compelling portraits of Jackie, Marilyn Joan et al have been collected – along with many of the lesser known faces that made up his world – in Andy Warhol Portraits and they are as fresh as the first time you saw them.”—Sunday Telegraph

“Hurrah for yet another great book on our wig wearing disco dancing Andy Warhol.”—Ten +

“An eye-opening collection.”—Daily Express

“By gathering 300 of his portraits together for the first time, this volume proves that legacy of Warhol’s works is far from superficial. His acid-bright portraits are, and will remain, the portrait of his age.”—The Independent

“This is one book to be judged by its glamorous, classy cover.”—The American

“Fascinating.”—Digital Photographer

“A fascinating visual anthology.”—The Sunday Business Post

“This tome of Warhol faces both famous and anonymous deserves a prime spot on any art lover’s coffee table.”—GOTHAM

“An important contribution to academic library 20th Century American Art History reference collections, Andy Warhol Portraits is a ‘must’ for the personal collections of Warhol’s legions of admirers.”—The Midwest Book Review

“Each carefully constructed, color saturated image is its own Warhol masterpiece, but together they become something even greater: iconic.”—NYLON

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