As a series that Andy Warhol began early in his career, his Cow wallpapers serve as a preliminary declaration of the artist’s creative ethos: a subversion of the historical canon and an embrace of commercial art forms by rendering repetitive imagery in unnaturally vibrant hues. Warhol recalled the impetus for these prints, which began with a flippant conversation with art dealer Ivan Karp:
“Another time [Karp] said, ‘why don’t you paint some cows, they’re so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts.”
—Andy Warhol
Left: Hugh R. Hopgood, Cattle, A.D. 1914–1916, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1930, 30.4.70.
Right: Jacob van Strij, Landscape with Cattle, c. 1800, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1890, 91.26.8Of course, under Warhol’s command, the once-quaint cow becomes anything but pastoral, adding a new, Pop layer to the subject’s artistic lineage. Like so many of Warhol’s most striking images, the Cow wallpapers began with Warhol and his associates mining magazines for subjects, here trading his clippings of celebrities for the humble Jersey cow. Factory assistant Gerard Malanga found the wallpapers’ source image in an agricultural magazine, in which the chosen cow is described to “possess quality and refinement,” sophisticated traits that could just as easily be applied to the household names that typically served as Warholian subjects.
The source image for the Cow wallpaper, as found in an agricultural magazine. By removing the context of a bucolic nineteenth century field or the grounds of a county fair, Warhol elevates the simple genre painting subject of the cow, giving the animal star power through the same treatment he exercised in his portraiture of Marilyn Monroe or Chairman Mao: cropped to be seen from the neck up and overlaid with the most vivacious of colours. Warhol later recalled Karp's exclamatory response to their blazingly bright essence:
“They're super-pastoral!”
—Ivan KarpSoon, spurred by Karp’s enthusiasm for the Cow, Warhol debuted the image at his 1966 exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. The artist covered an entire room of the gallery in large-scale, floor-to-ceiling wallpaper featuring the first iteration of Cow in shocking shades of neon pink and yellow. The nature of the wallpaper was a natural extension of his fascination with the repeated image in his paintings, and the installation added an immersive element. In 1967, Warhol quipped to Mademoiselle magazine regarding his attraction to wallpaper as a medium: "I hate to see things on walls. Doing the whole room is OK, though."i Throughout his career, Warhol revisited the Cow wallpaper for later exhibitions, including a brown and blue scheme for his 1971 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Two other colour variants – yellow and blue, and pink and purple – were produced, with the pink-purple iteration being published for a 1976-77 exhibition at the Seattle Center’s Modern Art Pavilion.i Quoted in Wayne Koestenbaum, Andy Warhol: A Biography, 2015, p. 110.
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Literature
Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann 12A
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.
6
Cow (F. & S. 12A)
1976
Screenprint in colours, on wallpaper, the full sheet.
S. 115.6 x 75.6 cm (45 1/2 x 29 3/4 in.)
Signed in black ink (Feldman and Schellmann call for approximately 100 signed), published by Factory Additions, New York, for a Warhol exhibition at the Modern Art Pavilion, Seattle Center, Seattle, 18 November 1976 to 9 January 1977, unframed.
Estimate
£10,000 - 12,000 ‡
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London Auction 23 - 24 January 2025
