Andy Warhol Portraits

This book grew out of an exhibition that was organized by the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, in 2005. With the show, Shafrazi paid homage to a seminal display of Warhol's portraits that took place at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1979-80. Titled "Andy Warhol: Portraits of the 1970s," 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 of the portraits shown in the original Whitney exhibition as well as others. This volume takes Shafrazi's exhibition even further, nearly doubling the number of works shown.Art historians and critics have long neglected this body of Warhol's work, preferring to discuss and study the more iconic Lizzes and Marilyns or Campbell's Soup Cans of the 1960s. Many of the portraits in this book have rarely been seen before. For example, the book will include, in addition to the famous portraits of Jackie, Marlon Brando, or Dennis Hopper, images that Warhol made of actors Bill Murray and Meryl Streep, of fellow artists Donald Judd, Cy Twombly, and Joseph Kosuth, of royal family members such as Princess Diana and Princess Caroline, and of lesser-known socialites and art patrons. This book includes an essay by Robert Rosenblum, who also contributed to the Whitney's original exhibition catalogue, a text by renowned art historian and Warhol expert Carter Ratcliff, and an introduction by Tony Shafrazi.