28” x 36” - oil & latex paint on panel with cellophane

FREE SHIPPING!!!

Andy Warhol is synonymous with many things – I’m pretty sure he was one of the first, if not the first, to wear blue jeans with a suit jacket. In terms of his work, everyone thinks of silk screens and his famous Polaroid portraits. Even though Andy, to me, never seemed comfortable in his skin, he often turned the camera on himself and created some of the best, most avant-garde self-portraits I’ve seen.

Andy died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1987 and just prior to that, he put together a series of shots – his last self-portraits – in preparation for a gallery show of large screen prints. Instead of using make-up and lighting to make himself look good, he isolated his head on a black background and looked deadpan into the camera with terrible shadows and messed up silver wigs. It’s this harsh depiction of himself that creates the power in these photographs.

From these photos, Warhol made several large works depicting himself in fright wigs – some were intensely colored in electric blue, hot pink, and fluorescent green and with some, Andy experimented with camouflage – a radical design element we still see reverberating throughout both the art and fashion worlds three and a half decades later.