Andy Warhol Drawings and Related Works
Harriet Zinnes
In whatever Andy Warhol executed whether paint, print, or film he always had a sense of play. Perhaps that’s why he will be remembered whatever his fame in art for his remark that "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." Well, it is more than fifteen minutes since the death of Andy Warhol in l987 and his fame is still flourishing. It doesn’t matter that it was not what we commonly consider art that he is remembered but rather it is the projects of mass production and reproduction that have gained him fame.
But the Gagosian Gallery showed chiefly drawings, and they certainly give pleasure. That pleasure emanates from the very pleasure that it is evident the artist himself had in his work. Whether it is graphite and wash, offset lithography, watercolor or simply pen on paper, a viewer senses the delight that the artist had in the making. At the Gagosian there is ample proof of his dexterity and his productivity. Coming from the commercial world, that dexterity had to be a must. We see here some of the results of the artist’s commercial drawings of shoes (with such gleeful titles as "To shoe or not to shoe"), and there is no taking away from the pleasure of the expertise.
