Andy Warhol’s Steaks 99c, created in the mid-1980s, encapsulates the artist’s fascination with media, consumer culture and the commodification of imagery. The screenprint appropriates a newspaper advertisement for discount steaks, featuring a bold “99¢” price and a stark black-and-white illustration of two slabs of meat. Warhol’s cropping and presentation of this ordinary, utilitarian graphic elevates it into the realm of fine art while retaining its connection to mass media. The subject matter – steaks, a symbol of indulgence and affluence – juxtaposed with their bargain price adds a subtle irony, highlighting the tensions between desire and value in contemporary capitalist society. By isolating this familiar imagery and repeating the industrial aesthetic of the original ad, Warhol exposes the ways consumer advertising manipulates perception, reducing goods to symbols of status or aspiration.
Andy Warhol, 1978. Image: Zumapress / Bridgeman Images In the 1980s, the United States was marked by economic boom and a culture of material excess under Ronald Reagan’s presidency. This “Reaganomics” era fostered a focus on wealth, consumption, and aspirational living, themes deeply embedded in advertising and popular culture. At the same time, mass media’s influence surged, saturating daily life with images that defined desires and cultural values. Steaks 99c reflects this moment: a period where the promises of capitalism coexisted with a quiet irony about its contradictions. The steak, an emblem of luxury, rendered banal through discount pricing, epitomises this dissonance. Warhol, ever the astute observer, transformed ephemeral media such as the steaks advertisement into artworks that comment on the increasingly blurred boundaries between abundance, accessibility, and meaning.
“I don’t change the media, nor do I distinguish between my art and the media. I just repeat the media by utilising the media for my work.”
—Andy WarholWarhol’s use of newspaper imagery extended far beyond consumer ads, as seen in works like the Death and Disaster series (1962–63). In this body of work, Warhol lifted photographs of car crashes, electric chairs, and suicides from newspapers, repeating them through screenprint to unsettling effect. This exploration underscored the desensitising nature of mass media, where even tragedy becomes consumable, afforded its own fifteen minutes of fame before fading and being replaced by the next sensationalist news story. In Steaks 99c, the same strategy of direct appropriation is at play; as Warhol once stated, “I don’t change the media, nor do I distinguish between my art and the media. I just repeat the media by utilising the media for my work.” For Warhol, the newspaper ad served both as inspiration and subject matter, a reflection of the era’s media-saturated culture.
Fittingly, Warhol’s embrace of the mechanical, commercial process of screen printing mirrored the very techniques used to mass-produce the advertisements he appropriated. Since the 1960s, Warhol had favoured screenprinting for its ability to produce consistent, repeated images while diminishing the role of the artist’s hand. This industrial technique allowed him to blur the boundaries between fine art and commercial production, aligning his work with the processes underpinning consumer culture. In Steaks 99c, the screenprinting process reinforces Warhol’s critique of mass media and consumerism while celebrating their visual power, offering a commentary on repetition, reproduction, and the ways images mediate everyday experience.Provenance
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York
Literature
Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann IIIA.68
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.
8
Steaks 99¢ (F. & S. IIIA.68)
circa 1986
Unique screenprint, on Moulin du Verger paper, the full sheet (deckle on all sides).
S. 55.5 x 39 cm (21 7/8 x 15 3/8 in.)
One of a small number of impressions (there was no published edition), with the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Visual Arts Foundation inkstamps, initialled 'T.J.H.' by Timothy J. Hunt of the Andy Warhol Foundation and annotated 'UP15.36' and 'A026421' in pencil on the reverse, unframed.
Estimate
£10,000 - 15,000 †
Sold for £12,700
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Evening & Day Editions
London Auction 23 - 24 January 2025
59
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