As a series Warhol began early in his career, his Cow wallpapers serve as a preliminary declaration of the artist’s creative ethos: a subversion of the historical canon and an embrace of commercial art forms by rendering repetitive imagery in unnaturally vibrant hues. Warhol recalled the impetus for these prints, starting with a flippant conversation with art dealer Ivan Karp:
“Another time [Karp] said, ‘why don’t you paint some cows, they’re so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts.”
—Andy Warhol
Left: Hugh R. Hopgood, Cattle, A.D. 1914–1916; original ca. 1427–1400 B.C., tempera on paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1930, 30.4.70.
Right: Jacob van Strij, Landscape with Cattle, ca. 1800, oi on wood. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1890, 91.26.8Of course, under Warhol’s command, the once-quaint cow becomes anything but pastoral, adding a new, Pop layer to the subject’s artistic lineage. Like so many of Warhol’s most striking images, the Cow wallpapers began with Warhol and his associates mining magazines for subjects, here trading his clippings of celebrities for the humble Jersey cow. Factory assistant Gerard Malanga found the wallpapers’ source image in an agricultural magazine, in which the chosen cow is described to “possess quality and refinement,” sophisticated traits that could just as easily be applied to the household names that typically served as Warholian subjects.
The source image for the Cow wallpaper, as found in an agricultural magazine. By removing the context of a bucolic 19th century field or the grounds of a county fair, Warhol elevates the simple genre painting subject of the cow, giving the animal star power through the same treatment he exercised in his portraiture of Marilyn Monroe or Chairman Mao: cropped to be seen from the neck up and overlaid with the most vivacious of colors. Karp's exclamatory response that Warhol recollected embodies their blazingly bright essence:
“They're super-pastoral!”
—Ivan KarpSoon, spurred by Karp’s enthusiasm for the Cow, Warhol debuted the image at his 1966 exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. The artist covered an entire room of the gallery in large-scale, floor-to-ceiling wallpaper featuring the first iteration of Cow in shocking shades of neon pink and yellow, exemplified in the present print. The nature of the wallpaper was a natural extension of his fascination with the repeated image in his paintings, and the installation added an immersive element. In 1967, Warhol quipped to Mademoiselle magazine regarding his attraction to wallpaper as a medium: "I hate to see things on walls. Doing the whole room is OK, though."i Throughout his career, Warhol revisited the Cow wallpaper for later exhibitions, including a brown and blue scheme for his 1971 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Two other color variants – yellow and blue, and pink and purple– were produced, with the pink-purple iteration being published for a 1976-77 exhibition at the Seattle Center’s Modern Art Pavilion.
A Polaroid of Andy Warhol with David White, taken by David Whitney. Image: Courtesy of David White. “I became close to these people who are now all gods. But they weren’t then.”
—David WhitneyThis Cow wallpaper was formerly in the collection of David Whitney – the celebrated curator, gallerist, advisor and collector who was an early champion of American artists like Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella, and Eric Fischl. In the East 19th Street loft where his eponymous gallery was located on the second floor, Whitney decided to wallpaper the fourth-floor kitchen (a space often utilized for events) with the iconic cow image, using leftover sheets from the 1966 Castelli exhibition gifted to him by Warhol for this very purpose. Whitney and his partner, the famed architect Philip Johnson, also later used some of the extra wallpaper to adorn the powder room of their Museum Tower apartment. Packed away as surplus from Whitney’s own wallpapering pursuits, this Cow stands as an artifact of Whitney’s ongoing involvement with Warhol, as an integral friend, confidante, and collaborator among his network of emerging artists. Over the years, Whitney helped to publish four of the Warhol’s early print portfolios for Factory Additions and personally curated two exhibitions of his work; following Warhol’s untimely death in 1987, Whitney served on the Advisory Committee for the planning and opening of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg from 1993-1994 and acted as the President of the Andy Warhol Authentication Board from 1995 until his own death in 2005.“David still reminds me that he wants us to get married[…] and now that I hear how many Jasper Johnses he has, it could really be worth it.”
—Andy Warhol, on David Whitney
(Left to right): David White, Andy Warhol, and David Whitney, c. 1970s. Whitney, continuing the history of this Cow, gifted it in turn to David White, a curator with an impressive parallel professional history – the pair had often worked together on projects and endeavors. White, like Whitney, had worked at Leo Castelli Gallery, later moving to David Whitney’s eponymous gallery and helping organize a 1979 exhibition that Whitney curated, Andy Warhol: Portraits of the 70s at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Now, White serves as senior curatorial advisor at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, after over forty years of working with Rauschenberg and his foundation as a registrar, archivist, and curator. This Cow thus becomes not only a prime example of Warhol’s propensity for transforming even the most banal of images, but a memento of the history of two legendary art curators who supported and continue to pioneer premier voices in post-war and contemporary art.
i Quoted in Wayne Koestenbaum, Andy Warhol: A Biography, 2015, p. 110.
Provenance
David Whitney, New York
David N. White, New York (gifted by the above, 1972)Literature
Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann 11
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.
288
Cow (F. & S. 11)
1966
Screenprint in colours, on wallpaper, the sheet trimmed.
S. 116.2 x 71.4 cm (45 3/4 x 28 1/8 in.)
Unsigned, from the unlimited edition (100 were stamp-signed), published by the artist, New York, for the exhibition Andy Warhol: Wallpaper & Clouds at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, April 6 - 27, 1966, unframed.
Estimate
£5,000 - 7,000 ‡
Sold for £7,620
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Evening & Day Editions
London Auction 19 - 20 September 2024
407
This lot is no longer available.
