White Painting
1964
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)
Not on View

Andy Warhol remains the de facto leader of Pop Art. As with most of his fellow artists who incorporated popular culture into their work, he had successful beginnings in commercial illustration. Using subjects from mass-circulated images as well as from photographs that he took himself, Warhol was able to comment on the nature of consumerism, and more broadly, on artifice and reality vis-à-vis the seemingly endless reproduction of imagery. White Painting is one such picture. Based on a photograph of a nude torso, the painting was intended to be seen at its clearest in the dark, under ultraviolet light. This restricted view allowed Warhol to play with the demarcation between the clandestine consumption of pornography and the public viewing of art. The mechanical reproduction of the image—like so many of his works, a silkscreen based on a photograph—naturally comments on how the female body has been used to sell everything from soda pop to sex itself.

Details

  • Artist Name: Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)
  • Title: White Painting
  • Date: 1964
  • Medium: Oil and silkscreen on canvas
  • Dimensions: 59-7/8 x 38-1/4 in. (152.1 x 97.2 cm)
  • Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Irving Blum
  • Accession Number: P.1969.073
  • Copyright: © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Object Information

Andy Warhol, sold 1964 to;
[Irving Blum, Los Angeles, gift 1969 to];
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, 1969-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 1975.

Andy Warhol - From A to B and Back Again

  • Whitney Museum of American Art, 2018-11-12 to 2019-03-31
  • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2019-05-18 to 2019-09-02
  • Art Institute of Chicago, 2019-10-20 to 2020-01-26

Recent Acquisitions, 1969

  • Pasadena Art Museum, 1969-11-24 to 1970-01-18

Works from the Pasadena Art Museum

  • Vancouver Art Gallery, 1970-04-14 to 1970-05-10
  • Pasadena Art Museum, Recent Acquisitions 1969, 1969, p. 14
  • Donna De Salvo, Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, 2018, p. 285

Additional Artwork by Artist

Campbell's Soup I: Beef Andy Warhol 1968
Campbell's Soup I: Black Bean Andy Warhol 1968
Campbell's Soup I: Chicken Noodle Andy Warhol 1968

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