Cow Wallpaper
| Cow Wallpaper [Pink on Yellow] | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Andy Warhol |
| Year | 1966 |
| Medium | Screen print on wallpaper |
| Dimensions | 46 by 28 inches (117 cm × 71 cm) |
| Location | The Andy Warhol Museum, North Shore, Pittsburgh |
Cow Wallpaper is a screen print by American artist Andy Warhol in 1966. Warhol created a series of four screen prints from 1966 to 1976.[1]
Background
[edit]According to Warhol, the inspiration for the cow image came from art dealer Ivan Karp:
"Why don't you paint some cows, they're so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts." (Ivan talked like this.) I don't know how "pastoral" he expected me to make them, but when he saw the huge cow heads — bright pink on a bright yellow background — that I was going to have made into rolls of wallpaper, he was shocked. But after a moment he exploded with: "They're super-pastoral! They're ridiculous! They're blazingly bright and vulgar!" I mean, he loved those cows and for my next show we papered all the walls in the gallery with them.[2]
The cow image is believed to have come from E.S. Harrison's book, Judging Dairy Cattle.[3]
Analysis
[edit]The historian and critic Barbara Rose interpreted Cow Wallpaper as a commentary on the nature of art collecting and the character of the institutions where art is displayed. In a review of Warhol's 1971 retrospective show at the Whitney, she observed that cows are a common subject of genre paintings that people display in their homes, and that the wallpaper made the Whitney look like "a boutique". She continued: "Of course the museum has been a boutique for a long time, and people have been treating paintings like wallpaper even longer. But Andy spells it out with his usual cruel clarity."[4]
Exhibitions
[edit]Warhol's April 1966 show at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York consisted of Cow Wallpaper in one room, and a second room with Warhol's silver helium-filled Clouds.[5]
At Warhol's request, the pink and yellow Cow Wallpaper was used as the backdrop to cover all the walls for his 1971 retrospective at the Whitney in New York.[6][7]
References
[edit]- ^ "Andy Warhol Cow Wallpaper, 1966 - 1976 (0)". www.masterworksfineart.com. Retrieved 2024-10-07.
- ^ Warhol, Andy; Hackett, Pat (1980). POPism: The Warhol 60s. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 18. ISBN 9780151730957.
- ^ Harrison, Edwin S. (1940). Judging Dairy Cattle. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons. p. 24.
- ^ Rose, Barbara (31 May 1971). "In Andy Warhol's Aluminum Foil, We Have All Been Reflected". New York Magazine. p. 55. ISSN 0028-7369.
- ^ "Andy Warhol". Castelli Gallery. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
- ^ Canaday, Joan (May 1, 1971). "Art: Huge Andy Warhol Retrospective at Whitney". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 7, 2024.
- ^ Belt, Byron (1971-05-04). "Warhol Museum Triumph". The Jersey Journal. p. 24. Retrieved 2024-10-07.
External links
[edit]- Pictures of 1966 show at Leo Castelli Gallery
- Picture of 1971 show at Whitney
- Version of Cow Wallpaper exhibited at the Whitney, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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