In January 1964 Warhol moved his studio to East Forty-seventh Street and began to produce works in series, allowing him to create open-ended aggregations of boxes or canvases that could be combined, recombined, or left as single units. This volume of the catalogue raisonne reproduces the series "Thirteen Most Wanted Men"; seven distinct series of box sculptures, including "Brillo", "Heinz Ketchup", and "Del Monte Peach Halves", among others; the "Jackie Paintings", based on press coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963; a series of portraits, including 11 self-portraits; "Marilyn" and "Jackie" paintings of mid-1964, with which Warhol introduced a new procedure in the studio - painting in areas of local colour by hand; and the 1964 "Flowers" series, probably Warhol's earliest allusion to abstract painting. An important component of the source material in this volume is Billy Linich's rare photographs of works and people inside The Factory, as well as archival photos of gallery and museum installations showing original combinations of these serial works, and original newspaper clippings and silkscreen mechanicals.
Whenever possible, catalogue entries attempt to record how and when a multi-canvas work came to be assembled in its present format. All works are reproduced in colour, with two-colour text that makes it easier for readers to find their way through the catalogue entries. These list for each work the standard data (dimensions, date, present owner, inscriptions and special notes), provenance, exhibitions and literature. Volumes are organized according to catalogue number, with works reproduced in numerical order, followed by the corresponding texts. this volume includes appendices documenting each of Warhol's solo museum exhibitions of the period, with a list of every work included in each exhibition. Additional reference material includes notes to the catalogue texts; a title index; and a comprehensive general index. Indexes cross-reference works with their catalogue numbers and page numbers as they appear in the book. The catalogue raisonne project was initiated in 1977 by Thomas Ammann. The editors Georg Frei and Neil Printz began primary research in 1993, advised by the distinguished curators and art historians Kynaston McShine and Robert Rosenblum.
Experts from the Andy Warhol Foundation reviewed archival materials, personally examined nearly each work of art, analyzed works in museums in their conservation facilities and discussed them with conservators, submitted works for review by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, and interviewed Warhol's assistants and colleagues to assemble a customized database of works unparalleled in Warhol scholarship. Warhol's method of working in serial compositions, silkscreen, and repeating units challenges traditional art connoisseurship and begs the question not only of what is and what is not Warhol, but which Warhol is it? For each work, the catalogue answers, among other things, two central questions: When was it made? and How was it executed?
Author Biography:
Georg Frei is a curator, art critic and editor who has been affiliated with Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG in Zurich since 1988. Previously he wrote art, dance, and theatre criticism for several Swiss newspapers and magazines. For the Thomas Ammann gallery he has organized more than a dozen exhibitions and edited the accompanying catalogues on such artists as Picasso, Cy Twombly, Max Beckmann and Willem de Kooning. For the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, he was the Guest Curator of the exhibition 'Andy Warhol: Series and singles, 2000-2001'.
Neil Printz, a specialist in twentieth-century American art, in New York, is currently Editor of the Isamu Noguchi Catalogue Raisonne. He is Professor of Art History at Caldwell College in Caldwell, New Jersey.
Sally King-Nero is Curator of Drawings and Photographs at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, a position she has held since 1993. She has been extensively involved in the examination and cataloguing of Warhol's works since the 1980s.
