Andy Warhol - NEW YORK NEW YORK New York Saturday, December 12, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private Collection

  • Exhibited

    Pittsburgh, The Andy Warhol Museum, All Tomorrow's Parties: Remembering the Velvet Underground, May 18 - September 1, 1996

  • Literature

    J. Kugelberg, ed., c/o The Velvet Undergound New York, NY, New York, 2007, n.p., (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay


    The phenomenal collaboration between Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground and Nico while Warhol was the band’s manager from 1965-1967 culminated in the epic debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico released by Verve Records in 1967. Recorded in 1966 during Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia event tour, The Velvet Underground & Nico has since become one of the most influential and critically acclaimed albums of all time.
    An assemblage of fifteen original albums (lot 292), is shown as a Warhol multiple, with its inherent variations in printing and placement of the banana sticker and the Warhol signature. The back cover of the album showcases additional variations. On early copies of the album, in both the mono and stereo version, the Warhol scenester/actor/dancer Eric Emerson appears projected onto the band in a photograph from a performance of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. A financially strapped Emerson, who hadn’t given reproduction permission, threatened legal action against the label, Verve Records. In response, a new cover was designed and issued to replace the original and a large sticker was used to cover Emerson’s image of the existing unsold albums. All three states of the album are represented in this lot.
    The Velvet Underground (lot 294) is a sheet the iconic banana stickers designed by Andy Warhol for use on the cover of the groundbreaking 1967 debut album. This is one of only two known unpeeled and unpasted sticker sheets extant. The iconic banana stickers were custom applied to the album covers with intentional variable precision.
    Comprised of a rare Velvet Underground and Nico poster, lot 293, produced by Verve Records to promote their album as part of a promotional campaign that utilized the cutting edge Pop sensibility of the era. This is the only known surviving example of this poster. The extreme rarity of this work was most likely due to the controversy surrounding the unauthorized use of the image of Eric Emerson from the Exploding Plastic Inevitable on the album. This striking poster may have never even been distributed.

  • 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.

     

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294

The Velvet Underground

ca. 1967
Silkscreen print on adhesive paper.
33 x 13 in. (83.8 x 33 cm).

Estimate
$10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for $12,500

NEW YORK NEW YORK

12 Dec 2009
New York