What is a Warhol?
In late 1967, Andy Warhol performed a series of college lectures in the United States. His dynamic personality and glamorous aura filled every room he entered, holding the students in rapt attention. Only it wasn’t Andy; it was Allen Midgette, a hired hand. The shy, laconic Warhol found collegiate engagements dull and wearisome, so he engaged Allen to don a wig and impersonate him, recasting his own persona as vibrant and exciting.
Andy’s proclivity toward using another person to paint his own image extended to his interviews. On a handful of occasions, he held pseudo-interviews that were just invented dialogues by his printing assistant, Gerard Malanga, in the “spirit” of Warhol. They were, of course, executed with Andy’s knowledge and consent, which made them genuine Warhol interviews.
Andy’s art imitated his life. He worked relentlessly to create industrial production methods that placed layer after layer between himself and the art production process, eventually enabling him to extract himself entirely. He began his exploration of vicarious art by painting a single original, then having his assistants copy it—“like a factory would do it,” as he said—to extend his prolificacy.
His first experiment with editioned screenprints, a leap toward mass production, was not actually created by Andy. After preparing the Cooking Pot print, Andy gave it to Billy Klüver, an electrical engineer, to send to Europe for editioning. For later silkscreen paintings, he would paint a background, have someone screen the actual print, then paint embellishments over the top.
Eventually, he established a bona fide art factory in New York City that churned out both prints and paintings by the hands of his assistants, blurring the line between his own artistic work and “mechanical” reproduction. When he began producing portfolios, he stepped away from production completely: “The portfolios were never hand-screened by me. They were always manufactured. I chose the different colors for them.”
As his artistic enterprise evolved, Warhol began outsourcing the production of prints to offsite factories, supplying them with plastic sheets for replication. These external facilities, contracted by Andy Warhol Enterprises, were paid for each authorized piece they created. Rupert Jasen Smith, Warhol’s primary printer from 1977–1987, created more than 20,000 of Warhol’s prints and paintings.
This begs the question: Is it still a Warhol if he never touched the print?
The Warhol Authentication Board, established by the Andy Warhol Foundation in 1995, attempted to be the arbiter of that question. The board was responsible for authenticating prints and paintings—not necessarily to eliminate forgeries, but to determine which were actually Warhols and which were produced in his sphere but were not actually his.
The board’s mission encountered varying degrees of success in its quest. In 2003, it considered a print with stellar credentials. It was signed by Warhol and dedicated to his business partner, who had bought it directly from him in 1969. Warhol even used the image for the cover of his first Catalogue Raisonné in 1970.
According to a statement from the board, however: “It is the opinion of the authentication board that said work is NOT the work of Andy Warhol, but that said work was signed, dedicated, and dated by him.” It explained that the self-portrait had been created by an external printer. Even though Warhol had selected the picture, chosen the colors, guided the artistic process, and approved the results, it was not deemed to be his work.
In another case, pieces of artwork that Rupert Jasen Smith produced without Warhol’s knowledge were eventually deemed by the authentication board to be authentic works by Andy Warhol. When the board closed in 2011, it had established little consistency in what it regarded to be a Warhol.
Two years before Warhol’s death, the first edition of the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné for Prints, putatively the most comprehensive source for Andy’s screenprint work, was published. Three editions have been published since then, each revising and expanding the content and integrating new prints into his body of work.The last two editions, published in 1997 and 2003, include Warhol’s trial proofs and unpublished prints, as well as a chronology of his printing.
The longevity and comprehensiveness of the catalogue raisonné make it the authoritative source for determining whether a work is a Warhol. Neither an authentication board nor a book, however, take precedence over the artist themselves.The only source for what a Warhol is—is Andy himself. The mechanical, outsourced production of Warhol’s art was as much a part of his art as the colors and the design. His stratagem was to consistently insert parties between himself and the art he was making, to distance the art from his own hand—to take the human out of the equation, and make the art as if by a machine.
Warhol’s printers were the brushes, and his art was mechanical reproduction. Having other people doing “his” work is part of the art itself, and part of what makes it so inherently valuable. It took being an artist from someone who has their hand on the canvas or the clay or the squeegee or the paper, to someone who directs the art. In doing so, he not only bent the idea of what comprises art, but also played with and began to undermine orthodox notions of authorship.The artist became not someone who manufactures precious objects, but someone who creates new ways of making art.
For this, Warhol was ridiculed. But as usual, his iconoclasm was ahead of its time. Lichtenstein, Haring, and others followed suit, and now employing others is a common practice by contemporary artists. Jeff Koons, famed for his polished steel sculptures, employs hundreds of people. Damien Hirst, the richest artist in the UK, would simply direct other artists in their work. In other words, Andy both won the debate of what comprises art and gets to determine what is his own art.
The remaining difficulty in knowing what work is his is that Warhol rarely visited the factories that produced his work, and the printers worked unsupervised. Warhol had no way of knowing whether unauthorized prints were run off in addition to the ones he paid for. Complicating things, his assistants could run prints off without Warhol’s authorization or knowledge, meaning even a “Warhol” would not be an original Warhol.
In the final analysis, all art that the artist is aware of and pays for is by them. If Andy Warhol knew of and paid for a print or painting, then it is a genuine Warhol. If he was not aware of the prints that Smith and other printers produced, then those works are not by Warhol. While that definition works for his art, it did not for his college appearances. He was forced to return to each of the colleges to make up for the impersonations.
Click here to continue reading about the Warhol Market.
Photo Credits
Photograph 1: Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga in the Facotry, 1966, by Billy Name.
Photo 2: Andy Warhol in the Factory, 1980, by Bruno Ehrs.
Photo 3: Andy Warhol working with Flowers screenprints, 1965-1967, by Stephen Shore.
Photo 4: The complete Ten Portraits of Jews (Trial Proof) series inside Revolver Gallery, 2017, by David Holmes
