Andy Warhol - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 17, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York; Gagosian Gallery, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    The image of shoes was one of Andy Warhol’s primary motifs, symbolizing the sexiness and stardom that he adored.  This relationship started almost immediately after arriving in New York in June 1949, where Warhol received his first assignment - to illustrate shoes for a glamour article, ‘success is a job in New York.’ Warhol’s burgeoning business as a commercial illustrator for fashion magazines and advertising agencies dramatically grew with his position of sole illustrator for the I. Miller shoe campaign a few years later and the elegance depicted in Warhol’s shoes were at the height of glamour.
    Warhol returned to this motif in the 1980s, setting multi coloured combinations of women’s shoes against black backgrounds and covering the surface with sparkling ‘diamond dust.’ First presented to him by Rupert Smith the sparkling and glittering qualities inherent to this medium allowed Warhol to encapsulate the movie star glamour and reflect high fashion fame and money; ‘The brilliantly coloured footwear floating across sonorously black grounds, the love of the artifice of high style and the glittering surfaces – signifying magic and money – imbue Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoe Painting with the powerful resonance and electricity of his greates works.’ (Gagosian Gallery, New York press release, 1999).

  • 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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345

Diamond Dust Shoes

1981
Acrylic and silkscreen inks with diamond dust on canvas.
129 x 108 cm. (50 3/4 x 42 1/2 in).
Stamped with 'The Estate of Andy Warhol' and with The Andy Warhol Foundation seals and numbered PA70.049 on the overlap.  

Estimate
£300,000 - 400,000 

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

18 Oct 2008, 7pm
London