Andy Warhol’s Space Fruit: Lemons 196 depicts several images of lemons scattered on a pink background. This work is the first of the Space Fruit series, in which Warhol created screenprints of a variety of fruits in a similar abstract fashion. In this particular print, though they are all the same fruit, each one is unique, as some stem from the artist’s photos, while others are more abstract and minimalist interpretations, shown through yellow ovals with blue and purple shadows. The abstract composition and use of artificial colors in place of a common image are qualities that exemplify Warhol’s work and make his Space Fruit Collection instantly recognizable.
Space Fruit: Lemons 196 by Andy Warhol as Part of His Larger Body of Work
The Space Fruit series as a whole is much like Warhol’s Grapes series, which focuses on types of fruit. These prints are an example of the artist’s pop art twist on the still life genre, which was a massively practiced convention beginning in the early 1600s. Instead of the utilization of precision in linearity, Warhol breaks barriers with a modern view of these fruits. The Space Fruit series shows a major transition in the artist’s subject choice. Rather than capturing the glitz and glamour that was harbored in the high cultured society, these prints showcase more of the everyday. However, these fruits still maintain Warhol’s obsession with inevitable death and the ephemerality of both human and botanical nature.
