7 Warhol artworks you might not know about

Some artworks were mentioned at the recent WTF Art History Lecture about Andy Warhol (IT WAS EFF-ING FABULOUS) last Saturday: artworks that I hadn’t seen before. You may have seen the Campbell’s soup cans and Marilyn Monroe series countless times, but have you seen these?

Sunsets

Warhol was a big fan of Joseph Albers, and these Sunsets are clearly Albers’ color concepts on a stick. Look how they vibrate! The Sunset series was printed with 472 different color variations, and used only three screens. 

Shadows

“…Conceived as one painting in multiple parts, with the final number of canvases being determined by the dimensions of an exhibition space, these 102 silkscreened canvas panels. Shadows were painted with a sponge mop, the streaks and trails it left adding gesture to the picture plane. Seven or eight different screens were used to create the series, as is evidenced in the slight shifts in scales of dark areas as well as the arbitrary presence of spots of light. The “shadows” alternate between positive and negative imprints as they march along the wall of the gallery. In focusing on the shadow to devise light—that is to say, sparks of color—Warhol returns to the quintessential problem of art: perception.” – Guggenheim exhibits

Diamond Dust Shadows

One year after Shadows, Warhol created Diamond Dust Shadows with glass or diamond dust. This series could be about abstract/minimalist aesthetic, existentialism, disco, sparkling religious iconography, something else, everything else, or nothing else.

Mao Wallpaper

Some guests have to abruptly leave these displays, from overstimulation and nausea.

Rorschach

Warhol misunderstood, and thought that Rorschach ink blots were to be made by the patient and read by the psychologist, so he made his own, slightly larger set.

Last Suppers

What’s better than one Last Supper? Sixty Last Suppers.

Is Warhol’s Camouflaged Last Supper a commentary on his camouflaged Catholicism? His own mysterious self as an artist? The war of art? An interplay with monochromatic forms of color and value?

After death, uninteresting

Warhol died in 1987, at the age of 58. I don’t typically post artist’s gravestones (maybe I should) but I stumbled across this and had to include it. Perhaps someone could explain to me: how the heck did someone like Warhol end up with such a boring gravestone?!?