Andy Warhol - Editions & Works on Paper New York Tuesday, April 16, 2024 | Phillips
  • “I like money on the wall. Say you were going to buy… a painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you, the first thing they would see is the money on the wall.”
    —Andy Warhol

    Long intrigued by the complex relationship developing between wealth and power, Warhol was born in the industrial hub of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to immigrant parents in 1929, just one year before the Wall Street Crash plunged America into the Great Depression. By the time he moved to New York however, in 1949, the United States was changing rapidly as it underwent a phenomenal post-World War II economic growth. After years of wartime rationing, a new era of technological change and commercial enterprise led to a boom in consumerism. Supplemented by visually saturated advertisements encouraging America to buy, buy, buy, it was an era of prosperity: of poodle-skirts, white picket fences, and credit-cards. Eventual Warhol muses emerged as icons, Marilyn Monroe gracing newly colorized tv screens while America jived to Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock.

     

    Andy Warhol, Printed Dollar Bill #3, 1962, Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey. Artwork: © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

    Though Warhol began using aspects of money as motifs in his practice as early as the 1950’s, esteemed art historian Calvin Tomkin suggests in his 1970 essay “Raggedy Andy” that Warhol was inspired to adopt the present dollar sign motif after a conversation with designer and gallerist Muriel Latow. Prompting her for more “fabulous ideas,” Latow playfully charged the artist fifty dollars. Playing along, Warhol wrote the check, leading the designer to muse: “Money. The thing that means more to you than anything else in the world is money. You should paint pictures of money.”i Returning to the motif as a mature artist, the present print was executed in the same year as his Dollar Signs exhibition with legendary New York gallerist Leo Castelli. A month later, Artforum featured Warhol in a feature piece on breakthrough artists; occupying the coveted centerfold position, Warhol chose to offer a fold-out triptych of dollar sign works to represent himself and his artistic practice.

     

    Installation view, New York, Leo Castelli, Andy Warhol: Dollar Signs, 1982. Artwork: © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

    Demonstrating Warhol’s keen graphic sensibility, the dollar sign prints are animated by the complex interaction of their layers, multiple overlaid impressions, deliberately misaligned, making the symbol appear to quiver and strain. The pulsating and saturated colors, vibrantly brash, articulate Warhol’s continued fascination with commodity culture. However, while his interpretations of products like Campbell’s soup cans or Brillo boxes reference consumer capitalism by invoking the objects we fetishize, the dollar symbol clarifies the artist’s focus on what drives consumption: money. Stating this so directly, Warhol challenged traditional notions of artists and guardians of high culture who sought to separate fine art from commercialism.

    “Business art is the step that comes after art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.”
    —Andy Warhol
    i George Frei and Neil Printz, The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné Vol. 1: Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963, London, 2002, p. 131

    • Provenance

      B-1 Gallery, Santa Monica, California

    • Literature

      Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann A.276

    • Artist Biography

      Andy Warhol

      American • 1928 - 1987

      Andy Warhol was the leading exponent of the Pop Art movement in the U.S. in the 1960s. Following an early career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol achieved fame with his revolutionary series of silkscreened prints and paintings of familiar objects, such as Campbell's soup tins, and celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe. Obsessed with popular culture, celebrity and advertising, Warhol created his slick, seemingly mass-produced images of everyday subject matter from his famed Factory studio in New York City. His use of mechanical methods of reproduction, notably the commercial technique of silk screening, wholly revolutionized art-making.

      Working as an artist, but also director and producer, Warhol produced a number of avant-garde films in addition to managing the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founding Interview magazine. A central figure in the New York art scene until his untimely death in 1987, Warhol was notably also a mentor to such artists as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

       

      View More Works

173

$ (1) (F. & S. A.276)

1982
Unique screenprint in colors, on Lenox Museum Board, the full sheet.
S. 19 3/4 x 15 5/8 in. (50.2 x 39.7 cm)
Signed and numbered 58/60 in pencil (there were also 10 artist's proofs), published by the artist, New York (with his copyright inkstamp on the reverse).

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$40,000 - 60,000 

Sold for $60,960

Contact Specialist

editions@phillips.com
212-940-1220

Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 16 - 17 April