Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2002

Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart; Hamburg, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Andy Warhol - Retrospektiv, July 1993 - February 1994, p. 140, illustrated in color
Seoul, Ho-Am Museum, Andy Warhol: Pop Art's Superstar, August - October 1994, p. 91, illustrated in color
Lucerne, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Andy Warhol Paintings 1960 - 1986, July - September 1995, cat. no. 75, p. 148, illustrated in color 
Wolfsburg, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; Vienna, Kunsthalle Wien; Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts; Porto, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves; Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum, Andy Warhol: A Factory, October 1998 - April 2000, p. 481, illustrated in color

Atelier, No. 801, October 1993, p. 18, illustrated in color

This painting is in excellent condition overall. The pigment surface is sound and secure. Any sliglht variation in the density of the diamond dust appears to be related to the application. There is an area of fly specks in the lilac shoe in the lower right quadrant. There is a faint horizontal stretcher bar mark, more noticeably in the peach shoe on the right. Under ultraviolet light, there are no apparent restorations. The canvas is framed in a wood strip frame with a small float.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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A superb collision of Warholian fixations - commercialism, glitz, money and fashion - the Diamond Dust Shoes series of 1980 is a fitting, if slightly premature, bookend to Andy Warhol's charmed artistic career. Notoriously, Warhol entered the New York commercial art world in the early 1950s as a young advertising illustrator. He received commissions from publications not limited to Glamour, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and the New Yorker, which fast tracked the artist to early success and distinction. And though Warhol prolifically sketched jewelry, handbags, clothing and gloves, it is his whimsical and charming shoe drawings that have endured as the most beloved and well-remembered works from the period.

A deceptively straightforward motif, Warhol's preoccupation with shoes is, in actuality, ripe with implications. On the most basic level, Warhol recognized the enormous subtext a pair of shoes communicates: their quality, make and style are fundamental financial status markers, just as they are also a basic means of personal expression. Warhol was thus not only fascinated by the power footwear is capable of conveying, but he also identified his own financial stability with his shoe renderings. He once remembered, "When I used to do shoe drawings for the magazines, I would get a certain amount for each shoe, so then I would count up my shoes to figure out how much I was going to get. I lived by the number of shoe drawings - when I counted them I knew how much money I had." (Simon Doonan, Andy Warhol: Fashion, London, 2004, p. 65).

In 1956, Warhol exhibited his Golden Slipper series, featuring gold-leaf collages of intricate and fanciful shoes. As an early indication of what would prove to be Warhol's lifelong preoccupation with celebrity, his marvelous golden slippers denoted royalty and wealth; humorously, he dedicated selected works in the series to idols such as Elvis Presley, Mae West, Julie Andrews and Judy Garland among others. It was shortly thereafter in 1960 that Warhol abandoned commercial art in pursuit of his own celebrity, as he sought to reinvent himself as one of the most important fine artists of the twentieth century.

Warhol's rise to superstardom was, of course, extraordinary, and by 1980, he celebrated this fame and fated immortality with the Retrospective and Reversal series, both of which revisited the artist's iconic images of the previous three decades - the Marilyn portraits, Campbell's soup cans and Flowers paintings, for instance, were all reappropriated and reimagined. It was during this time of retrospection and rediscovery that Warhol produced the Diamond Dust Shoes series. By all accounts a culmination of his obsession with stardom and grandeur, as well as a nod to his own success, the sparkling and boldly colored shoes were portrayed with ﷺsuch pizzazz that they embody a glitzy aesthetic well beyond the quie▨ter gold leaf collages.

Diamond Dust Shoes radiates with sparkle and zing, as it effortlessly succeeds in elevating the banality of a photograph of scattered shoes to the glory of high art. Vincent Fremont noted, "Andy created the Diamond Dust Shoe paintings just as the disco, lamé, and stilettos of Studio 54 had captured the imagination of the Manhattan glitterati." (Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Andy Warhol: Diamond Dust Shoes, 1999,♌ p. 9). Vivid 🧸and playful, the red, pink and blue tones of the present work most certainly capture the vibrancy of the late 70s and early 80s, particularly as they are offset by the dark shimmer of the painting's background. The shoes' inward pointing tips and circular composition also suggest an intoxicating sense of spiraling momentum. It is when activated by light, however, that the work's true exuberance shines, asserting its own star quality.

Warhol executed the bewitching series after his printer, Rupert Smith, suggested the potential of a new diamond dust silkscreening technique. Fine and powdery, the real diamond dust failed to yield the twinkle Warhol desired. The artist accordingly concocted his own "diamond dust" by utilizing pulverized glass, the shimmer of which wholly evoked the extravagance and beauty of fine jewelry. Warhol commenced his exploration of the medium with the Shadow series of 1979; deeply abstract, the monochrome Shadow paintings enabled Warhol to contemplate the nuances of the glistening surfaces and materials before he embarked upon the representative subject matter of Diamond Dust Shoes.

Clearly a distant cry from the commercially commissioned shoe illustrations of his early career, Warhol's Diamond Dust Shoes assertively proclaim his later riches and fame. Warhol famously distinguished between to the two phases of his artistic production by explaining, "I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist... making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art." (Exh. Cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, 1989, p. 459).  For Warhol, distinctioဣns of art and business were irrelevant - like his cascading and colliding shoes, everything and everyone intermingled in radiant fashion.