Customer Reviews

Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne 1962-1987

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This gem of a book gets into all the details of Warhol's print making. See source images as well as artist's and printer's proofs. A must for any collector wanting to explore Warhol's work as well as a real eye opener as to how busy this man really kept himself.

Prints, proofs, paintings -- everything is here, plus essays that explicate and set context.

Having just bought a Warhol print I wanted a catalogue to have a cocktail table book with my print shown. This book is beautifully written with very interesting perspectives on how the images were produced, how the subjects were chosen and it provided a highly sympathetic story of what went on in The Factory and the the era when the prints were being made. Every Warhol print is included. I love it.

I would like to add to the reviews below that this book is a pleasure to hold and to view because it is so well made. If there is any 'art' book that should be made for posterity it is the catalog raisonne of an artist. In this instance, the publisher has done the artist's audience a real service for, the book is beautifully printed and bound in Italy by Amilcare Pizzi; Italy seeming to have usurped Switzerland's place as the world's premier art book printer. The pages are thick and glossy and the reproduction is top notch.
For those of you who are unaware of what a catalog raisonne is, it is meant to be a compilation and historical record of an artist's work that documents execution date, medium, size of image or plate, size of edition if a print, whether signed or unsigned, etc. This information is used by artists, historians, collectors and dealers to attribute a piece of art and place it in the artist's oevre, and of course to aid in placing relative value on it. Here too, the archivists, publisher, and editor have done a fine job of documenting the relevant facts. This is especially important in the case of Warhol who was a serial printer, sometimes to the point of intentional promiscuity. So, the fact that wherever possible relevant information is provided speaks volumes about the prodigious effort that must have gone into this undertaking. I rate this book four stars because I fear that since this is the third edition, there will be yet another edition published that renders this one obsolete. I understand this is precisely because Warhol was an inprecise documentarian, when he chose to do so at all, but I don't relish having to purchase another high dollar, though valuable book that is only slightly different from the one I already own. For people who don't give a darn, the book rates a five.