All ten prints from Andy Warhol Ladies and Gentlemen series, hanging on gallery wall.
Andy Warhol photographing Marsha P Johnson in his factory with a polaroid camera for his Ladies and Gentlemen series.

Ladies and Gentlemen 131

Catalog Title: Ladies and Gentlemen (FS II.131)
Year: 1975
Size: 43 1/3" x 28 1/2"
Medium: Screenprint on Arches paper
Edition: Edition of 250, 25 AP, 1 PP, signed and numbered and dated '75 in pencil on verso.
Hidden

Ladies and Gentlemen 131 is one of the fourteen screenprints from Andy Warhol’s Ladies and Gentlemen portfolio. Warhol created the portfolio in 1975 after the idea was suggested to him by art dealer Luciano Anselmino, who also commissioned Warhol to make the Man Ray portfolio. Anselmino saw the idea of Ladies and Gentlemen as an interesting concept for Warhol to explore, creating a series of drag queens and performers. The portfolio was originally supposed to feature some well-known drag queens in Manhattan. Instead, Warhol enlisted Bob Colacello, editor of Interview Magazine, to recruit drag queens at a local club in Manhattan called the Gilded Grape, close to Warhol’s studio. Colacello was able to find fourteen models for the portfolio at the Gilded Grape, all of which Warhol would use as reference images to create the screenprints.

All of the screenprints in the portfolio appear stylistically similar, with each screenprint depicting a monochrome portrait of the model with transposed blocks of color across their figure. In Ladies and Gentlemen 131, the model is posed to show her side profile while her head is tilted upwards. Transposed blocks of color across the screenprint blanket the model with red, brown, mint-green, and pink shades, creating a collage-like sensibility.

Though the model is unidentified in Ladies and Gentlemen 131, as are many of the others in the portfolio, Warhol still portrays them in the likeness of his celebrity works. The portfolio depicts each model in a glamorous and extravagant manner, such as in Warhol’s screenprints of figures such as Liz Taylor, Mick Jagger, and Marilyn Monroe. The portfolio additionally explores the sociopolitical issues and efforts of the gay liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In the portfolio, Warhol depicts activists Marsha P Johnson and Wilhelmina Ross.

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