Andy Warhol Portraits (Hardcover)

by Tony Shafrazi (Author), Carter Ratcliffe (Author), Robert Rosenblum (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
First Book to Feature over 300 of Warhol's Famous Faces

"I think everybody is my friend." -Andy Warhol

To the general public, Andy Warhol is known as a painter of legendary icons, from Marilyn and Jackie O to his own ever-changing self-portrait. Less known are the portraits he made of socialites, art dealers, collectors, politicians, fashion designers and a variety of contemporary cult figures, mostly commissioned work that helped finance Warhol's many other artistic activities. Never before has there been a book that provides a comprehensive overview of all of Warhol's famous faces.

ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS by Tony Shafrazi, is the first book to provide a complete overview of Warhol's many celebrity portraits, from the famous to the infamous. It features over 300 glamorous portraits including many works largely unknown even by avid fans.

ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS grew out of an exhibition that was organized by the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York in 2005. Shafrazi paid homage to a seminal display of Warhol's portraits that took place at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1979-80. The Whitney exhibition presented for the first time a large array of the commissioned portraits that the artist began in the early 1970s as a way to offset the cost of multiplying activities at the Factory. Shafrazi's exhibition included many portraits from the original Whitney exhibition as well as others. ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS takes Shafrazi's exhibition even further, nearly doubling the number of works shown.

On the 20th anniversary of Warhol's death in 1987, there has never been a better time to reflect on Warhol's life and influence on pop culture today. According to a recent interview with Charlotte Abbot from Publishers Weekly, "It's a good moment for Andy Warhol. Culturally, he is still on top."

Art historians and critics have long neglected this body of Warhol's work, preferring to discuss and study the more iconic Marilyns or Campbell Soup Cans of the 1960's. ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS includes, in addition to famous portraits of Marlon Brando, Liz Taylor and Dennis Hopper, lesser-known images of actors Bill Murray and Meryl Streep, fellow artists Donald Judd and Cy Twombly and royal family members such as Princess Diana and Princess Caroline. It also features a number of musicians, including Prince and Dolly Parton, and fashion icons including Diane von Furstenberg and Giorgio Armani.

The book begins with an introduction by Tony Shafrazi, and features essays by established art historians/critics Carter Ratcliff and Robert Rosenblum, who lend insight into one of the least fully known but nevertheless prolific aspects of Warhol's endlessly fascinating career. The book makes the perfect gift for any pop culture fan.

About the Author
Tony Shafrazi is the director of the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York which first opened in 1979. He first met Andy Warhol in 1965 and Tony started showing his work in the gallery in the early 1980s.

Carter Ratcliff is an art critic. His writings on art include monographs on Andy Warhol and John Singer Sargent, as well as The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art. He has taught at a variety of institutions, including Hunter College, in New York and The New York Studio School.

Robert Rosenblum was Professor of Fine Arts at New York University and Stephen and Nan Swid Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He wrote extensively on Warhol, including the book Andy Warhol: A Retrospective and was a contributing editor for Artforum. Rosenblum passed away in December 2006.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press (March 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714846678
• ISBN-13: 978-0714846675
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 10.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #578,717 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Face-to-Face Comparisons Reveal Warhol's Perspectives, May 8, 2007

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

When most people think of Andy Warhol, images of Campbell's soup cans and a vividly colored Chairman Mao come to mind. For those who know Warhol better, memories also include Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, most wanted posters, and self-portraits of the artist.

What few appreciate is that portraiture was the bread-and-butter that Warhol used to finance his experimental work at the Factory. Before this book, you could not see the full range of this work. Unframed and grouped with similar and complementary works in the same time period, these 300 portraits show a considerable range of style and expression that will be a new perspective for all but collectors of Warhol portraits. I found the work to be so impressive that it totally changed my sense of who Warhol was as an artist.

In this book, the portraits do the talking. The brief essays merely describe the processes that Warhol used and that he tried to make people look good . . . and larger than life. But you knew that already, didn't you?

The range of the ways he captured the spirit of his subjects is what's most impressive in this volume. Repetition of the same image in one work with different treatments could help us see many different expressions of the person (see Natalie 1962). In other places, many images of the same person in one work express mood, movement, and a story (see Sixteen Jackies 1964). In other cases, multiple images of the same subject give us deep insight into personality (see Ethel Scull 1963). In other cases, the multiple images show the reality as well as the personality (see Merce Cunningham 1963 and Triple Rauschenberg 1963).

Exploring different use of colors and backgrounds, Warhol could totally change our emotions as viewers (Silver Liz 1963 gives us a sense of coolness and elegance while Liz 1963 shows a woman of great emotion and passion).

In Warhol's process, subjects were photographed around 100 times using a Polaroid camera. The subject then picked the images (or image) that she or he liked best. The images were turned into silk screens. Then, Warhol added the background and color to capture what the mere shape could not. The degree of focus also creates more or less power and immediacy (compare Donald Judd 1967 and Robert Rauschenberg 1967).

The portraits also create dialogues, such as when married couples had their portraits done around the same time. In the book, these images are often on facing pages. You'll be arrested to see Nelson Rockefeller 1967 and Happy Rockefeller 1968 looking off into the same spot in space . . . but not each other. The color overlap is minimal, emphasizing their differences.

These images are even more arresting when the pair are portrayed looking away from one another as with Gianni Agnelli 1972 and Marella Agnelli 1972.
In places, painterly backgrounds add remarkable depth and power to the images as with the Agnellis.

In places, the painterly treatment is sufficient to remind one of the work of Degas such as Lee Radziwell, 1972.

Portrait creators have always arranged sitters carefully to emphasize a certain point. Warhol does this in a very minimal way, often adding more than part of a hand touching the face or a bit of clothing. Because of its slight use, the impact is much stronger.

How do the subjects fare? Those with strong personalities do best. Those with complex personalities are rendered beautifully, but aren't as accessible. Subjects who want to look physically attractive often appear merely decorative, like a background model at a party.

Warhol's talent can best be seen by comparing the various ways he renders eyes. Male and female subjects alike receive slashes of color that sometimes resemble eye shadow and other times seem like tiny masks.

There isn't much that's soulful about these works. They are more about promotion than about moral uplift. It's all the more surprising when that soulfulness appears as in Farah Dibah Pahlavai (Empress of Iran) 1977.

Seeing Judy Garland 1979 and Liza Minelli 1979 made me wish that Warhol had done more mother-daughter combinations. These two stunners crawl right inside you.

Part of Warhol's art comes in knowing something about the person. Where the subject is unknown, you'll find yourself a little more baffled about what the message is. Think of each of the celebrity portraits then as being in part a reflection of the public image and our current perceptions. Warhol uses this celebrity awareness to good purpose in creating very minimal works that express the dominant impression of a person (see Martha Graham 1980).

As his career continued, the works became more daring. I was particularly drawn to the line drawings with bold bands of color such as in Paul Delvaux 1981 and Jean Cocteau 1985.

Some of these portraits will cause you to stop and rethink what you know about the people. I had that reaction to the pairing of Prince Charles 1982 (coolly displayed as a young symbol of the monarchy) with the almost flirtatious Princess Diana 1982 (appearing as a powerful force with an earthy grounding).

The portrait of John Lennon is simply stunning (1985-86).

For a good sense of Warhol's progress, you'll enjoy seeing many of his self-portraits.

Enjoy a good look!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A less familiar Warhol, April 27, 2007

By	Claude Reich (Florianopolis, Brazil and Paris, France) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book enables the reader to discover some rarely seen paintings by Warhol, representing many personalities from the sixties, seventies and eighties, from O.J. Simpson to Pelé, from the Queen of England to the Shah of Iran, artists, art dealers, art collectors, musicians (John Lennon...), actors, fashion designers and friends of the artist's. Even though it was this kind of work that drew the harshest criticism (Robert Hughes, critic for Time Magazine, dubbed Warhol the new Van Dongen, meaning by that that he only painted superficial portraits of the rich and famous of his time), they still show the scope and depth of Warhol's creative power. The book is lavishly illustrated and the text was written by leading Warhol authorities (dealer or critic). A very complete checklist of all the portraits illustrated is given at the end of the book. A valuable addition to the albeit extensive Warhol literature.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars full and detailed, September 29, 2008

By	Dessislava Boneva "expert shopper" (Georgia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an execellent recource for someone looking to see all of Warhol's ouvre - it includes practically all there is to see from his portraits. I loved it but I would only recommend it to someone with specific interest in the subject. Otherwise some other book featuring less but more varied works woud be more appropriate.