ANDY WARHOL Black & White Paintings 1985-86

Van de Weghe Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of Andy Warhol’s late “Blackand White Paintings” (1985-86) from October 14 – November 23, 2005. Based on advertising and other imagery found in the newspaper, these paintings are important examples of the Pop aesthetic present in many of Warhol’s late works. Warhol, of course, began his career as a commercial illustrator in the 1950s and newspapers were of enormous appeal to the artist. They provided the source material for a great deal of his work in the 1960s as well as this, one of his last, un-commissioned series. Here, Warhol drew on cheap commercial imagery of the most banal advertisements for the most humble products – shoes, boots, a statue of Christ -- and sloganeering from the service sector – “Somebody Wants to Buy Your Apartment!” The canvases contain silkscreens of rough-hewn, loosely drawn imagery, unmediated by painterly flourishes or layering. While Warhol’s trademark silkscreen is the primary technique in these paintings, he used an overhead projector to trace the image for the silkscreen, and they appear hand-drawn. Warhol had recently used this technique in his collaborations with Basquiat in 1983 and the drawing is similarly gestural and improvisational, giving the works the handmade-readymade element that is so compelling in Warhol’s work. It is striking how much these late paintings recall some of Warhol’s earliest work. In 1961, he made a series of hand-painted images in black-and-white, derived mostly from advertisements in the Daily News. These works were based upon advertisements of everyday goods – appliances, shoes, tools, and undergarments, for example – priced right for the common man. By 1985, the New York Post had replaced the Daily News for Warhol and he had long since replaced his paintbrush for a silkscreen (Warhol made his first works using silkscreens in 1962), but these two bodies of works are strikingly similar, both conceptually and in appearance. This Pop quality reminiscent of Warhol from the early sixties makes these late black-and-white paintings all the more intriguing.