Come up and see some etchings

Andy Warhol Love, Sex, and Desire .png

That Andy Warhol was a saucy so-and-so and never mind that whole little girl lost act. We’ve read the book and everything. And it was big. Anyways, back before he was churning out Marilyns and Campbell’s soup cans and cow wallpaper and then some more Marilyns after lunch, he was doing risqué line drawings of men getting it on. Which was a big deal back then when a chimney sweep might go into shock at the sight of a lady’s ankle and this was the love that dared not speak its name, not even on Grindr.

And he always wanted the drawings – a little reminiscent of the sketches of those other notorious gays Jean Cocteau and David Hockney – to be collected in a book. It’s blinking well taken a while but finally it has happened thanks to the clever old sticks at Taschen, who have made it their life’s work to bring the big art books to the little people.

Very much a first edition, it contains 7,500 numbered drawings (he was nothing if not prolific, that one!) and according to one art critic they reveal far more about the artist than the self-portraits ever did. And you can’t argue with that. Well, you can but do you want to be wasting time arguing with those people?

Taschen, £75


See more Briefings

Previous
Previous

The name on everybody’s lips is gonna be… Moxy!

Next
Next

Villa, much?