Andy Warhol’s How to Tell You're Having a Heart Attack and New York Heart Association Phonebook Ad, both from c. 1984, are sharp appropriations of medical advertisements originally promoting heart health. Using red and black ink on variously toned paper, the works mimic the stark functionality of their sources while playfully subverting their clinical authority.
How to Tell You're Having a Heart Attack parodies a New York Heart Association pamphlet, depicting simplified, instructional diagrams with highlighted body parts – humorous yet macabre echoes of mortality. The simplified drawings of the human body – complete with highlighted pain zones – retain the urgency of medical pamphlets yet take on a wry humour when decontextualised in this way. Similarly, the New York Heart Association Phonebook Ad reimagines a mundane 1982 New York City phonebook page advertising the same association, its dense columns of text crowned starkly by the word "HEART". Considering that these works were printed by Warhol to be sent to friends as holiday gifts, perhaps he hoped that “heart” would be read with its emotional meaning as well as medical – an affectionate note from the artist wrapped in quintessentially Warholian wit.
Warhol’s engagement with these images reflects his broader exploration of media and mortality, probing how information shapes our perception of the body and its vulnerabilities. The works are also deeply personal: Warhol’s well-documented health insecurities – exacerbated by his near-fatal 1968 shooting – imbue these prints with a subtle unease beneath their humour. As holiday presents, they fuse sentimentality with the mundane reality of mortality and health, functioning as memorable gifts cloaked in Warhol’s characteristic cool detachment.
