Eric Emerson (Chelsea Girls) 287 by Andy Warhol is a 1982 screenprint featuring frames from Warhol’s celebrated 1966 film Chelsea Girls. The image shows the artist’s close friend and collaborator, Eric Emerson—a musician, dancer, and actor. Warhol portrays him in overlapping hues of red, yellow, and blue. By isolating stills from the film reel, he emphasizes repetition, distortion, and the cinematic texture that became central to his later screenprint style.
Warhol’s Filmic Vision and the Chelsea Girls Legacy
Emerson was one of Warhol’s early “Superstars”, part of the vibrant social world that surrounded The Factory. His appearances in Andy Makes a Movie and The Velvet Underground Tarot Cards revealed a charisma that blurred the lines between art, performance, and persona. He also performed with the glam-punk band The Magic Tramps, embodying the gender-fluid, theatrical energy that Warhol admired. Rather than staging Emerson, Warhol transformed him into a visual rhythm—frames stacked vertically like echoes of motion, glowing with experimental color.
The print was included in A Portfolio of Thirteen Prints (1982), a collaboration among thirteen artists marking the conversion of New York’s Second Avenue Courthouse into the Anthology Film Archives. This new institution became the first museum devoted entirely to avant-garde film and video, aligning perfectly with Warhol’s interest in experimental cinema. Through this work, he celebrates film’s power to freeze time and multiply identity—a theme he had explored since the 1960s.
Moreover, the layered palette of Eric Emerson (Chelsea Girls) 287 links it to other Warhol prints from 1982, including Watercolor Paint Kit with Brushes and Committee 2000. In these works, Warhol used pastel tones and fragmented forms to evoke both still-life calm and cinematic pulse. Ultimately, Eric Emerson (Chelsea Girls) 287 bridges the artist’s worlds of film and printmaking, paying tribute to one of his most magnetic muses while reflecting his lasting fascination with fame, performance, and repetition.
Photo credit: Andy Warhol with Eric Emerson and others. Cecil Beaton, Courtesy Sotheby’s Picture Library, Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, c. 1969.
