Andy Warhol’s Cologne Cathedral Complete Portfolio presents four screenprints based on a photograph by Christopher Makos, a close collaborator who documented Warhol extensively during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Shot from a low angle, the cathedral rises sharply within the frame, its spires cropped tightly so they press against the picture’s edge. Across the series, Warhol overlays the Gothic structure with loose, hand-drawn linework, allowing color fields to surge behind and through the architecture.
Each print explores a distinct mood. In one, warm reds and oranges push the cathedral forward with urgency. In another, deep blues and blacks cool the surface and quiet the composition. Elsewhere, pale silver and yellow tones flatten the form, while the darkest variation recedes into near silhouette. Together, the four images read less as documentation and more as shifting emotional states, unified by repetition yet separated by color and contrast.
Source Image and Architectural Subject
The Roman Catholic cathedral depicted here stands in Cologne, Germany and houses the reliquary of the Three Kings. Construction began in the Middle Ages and stretched across centuries, leaving the building suspended between eras. As a result, the cathedral came to symbolize both endurance and faith within European history. Warhol gravitated toward this layered meaning, drawn to monuments that carried cultural weight beyond their physical form.
Makos’s photograph provided Warhol with a stark, frontal view. However, Warhol did not preserve photographic clarity. Instead, he disrupted it. Through silkscreen and diamond dust, he fractured the image into lines, shadows, and saturated color planes. Consequently, the cathedral becomes less a religious site and more an image filtered through memory, gesture, and surface.
Architecture in Warhol’s Late Work
Although Warhol is best known for portraits and commercial imagery, architecture occupied an important place in his later years. Works such as Neuschwanstein, Details of a Renaissance Painting (316A), and Brooklyn Bridge reveal his sustained interest in monumental structures. Similarly, his 1965 film Empire fixated on a single building over time, treating architecture as both subject and experience.
In the Cologne Cathedral series, Warhol applies this architectural focus to printmaking. He reduces detail, emphasizes vertical thrust, and allows color to carry emotional force. At the same time, the hand-drawn lines retain a sense of fragility. Thus, permanence and impermanence coexist within the same image.
Cologne Cathedral Complete Portfolio in Warhol’s Larger Body of Work
Produced in 1985, the Cologne Cathedral Complete Portfolio consists of four screenprints with diamond dust on Lenox Museum Board, catalogued as FS II. 361–364. Collectively, the series reflects Warhol’s late-career shift toward historic and architectural subjects, while maintaining his interest in repetition and variation. Rather than offering a single definitive image, Warhol presents four interpretations of the same structure, each altering how the cathedral is perceived.
As a result, the portfolio stands as both a meditation on faith and a study in image-making. It connects Warhol’s personal background, his fascination with surface, and his ongoing exploration of how meaning changes through color, process, and time.
Photo credit: Warhol contact sheets of Cologne Cathedral photographed by Christopher Makos, 1980. Courtesy of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.
