ARTISTS
Andy Warhol: Money on the Wall
Sotheby’s S|2 is pleased to present Andy Warhol: Money on the Wall, a selling exhibition. As one of the founding fathers of Pop art, Andy Warhol built his reputation on breaking down the traditional boundaries between high art and popular culture. His radical vision of American culture was inherently democratic—celebrating the powers of personalities and products alike—and so powerfully pervasive that it came to define an entire era of contemporary art history. Warhol highlighted the intricate dynamic between commerce and aesthetics by reinventing powerful symbols of American culture and consumerism, from Coca-Cola advertisements to Hollywood icons to the American Dollar. One of Warhol’s most instantly recognizable subject matters, money, conveys a perfect synthesis of his iconic philosophy.
The subject of ‘Dollar Bills’ provided the foundation for Warhol’s breakthrough series from 1961, which in turn prompted his revolutionary exploration of the silkscreen process. That he chose the dollar bill as the inaugural motif for his earliest silkscreen works was highly significant, and revealed the immense importance of ‘greenbacks’ for Warhol as a decorative item as well as a culturally and socially loaded signifier of success. Twenty years later, as his career was experiencing a pronounced renaissance in the early 1980s, Warhol revisited the subject of money, this time focusing on the curvilinear form of the dollar sign itself.
Both Warhol’s early and late money paintings comment on the nature of the art market and the value and prestige associated with it. For Warhol, the American dollar signified the American dream—both its peaks and pitfalls. In a statement that acquires a brilliant irony when connected to the Dollar Signs and Dollar Bills, Warhol once remarked, “I like money on the wall. Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you, the first thing they would see is the money on the wall.”
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Sotheby’s S|2 is pleased to present Andy Warhol: Money on the Wall, a selling exhibition. As one of the founding fathers of Pop art, Andy Warhol built his reputation on breaking down the traditional boundaries between high art and popular culture. His radical vision of American culture was inherently democratic—celebrating the powers of personalities and products alike—and so powerfully pervasive that it came to define an entire era of contemporary art history. Warhol highlighted the intricate dynamic between commerce and aesthetics by reinventing powerful symbols of American culture and consumerism, from Coca-Cola advertisements to Hollywood icons to the American Dollar. One of Warhol’s most instantly recognizable subject matters, money, conveys a perfect synthesis of his iconic philosophy.
The subject of ‘Dollar Bills’ provided the foundation for Warhol’s breakthrough series from 1961, which in turn prompted his revolutionary exploration of the silkscreen process. That he chose the dollar bill as the inaugural motif for his earliest silkscreen works was highly significant, and revealed the immense importance of ‘greenbacks’ for Warhol as a decorative item as well as a culturally and socially loaded signifier of success. Twenty years later, as his career was experiencing a pronounced renaissance in the early 1980s, Warhol revisited the subject of money, this time focusing on the curvilinear form of the dollar sign itself.
Both Warhol’s early and late money paintings comment on the nature of the art market and the value and prestige associated with it. For Warhol, the American dollar signified the American dream—both its peaks and pitfalls. In a statement that acquires a brilliant irony when connected to the Dollar Signs and Dollar Bills, Warhol once remarked, “I like money on the wall. Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you, the first thing they would see is the money on the wall.”
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