Description:
Though he is chiefly viewed as a monumental pop-art icon, Andy Warhol was truly a man of many talents. But his component parts don't necessarily match up. He made paintings, prints, sculptures, installations, performances; he produced one of the greatest rock bands of all time, the Velvet Underground; he directed films and wrote a novel as well as a philosophical text. But over and above this massive pile of work is a man who was unpredictable, enigmatic, and impenetrable: ultimately, he would have others think, almost inhuman. Drawings are the key to many artists' souls. They are personal, immediate, and limiting. Never more so than in the case of Andy Warhol has a book of drawings so brought an artist's humanity forward. He reveals his particular brand of filial affection in an early work titled The Broad Gave Me My Face but I Can Pick My Own Nose--a rebellious youth indeed. His male nudes from the 1950s are passionate and erotic: here is an artist in love with his subject. Warhol was a prolific drawer, and draw he could. Don't forget: he was a very successful commercial artist, an adman, long before his high-art career took off. Among these 248 color plates rest some wonderful little drawings that stand entirely on their own merit, not their creator's fame. The catalog Andy Warhol: Drawings, 1942-1987 offers rare insight into one of the century's strangest and most interesting artists. --Loren E. Baldwin
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