The Estate of Andy Warhol
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York
Stellan Holm Gallery, New York
Private Collection
Private Collection, New York

This work is in very good condition overall. The canvas is unlined. There is an unobtrusive, pin-point loss to the pigment 1 cm. from the bottom edge at the center of the composition. There is some very fine cracking to the pigment intermittently along the turning edges. Under Ultraviolet light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration. Framed.
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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Andy Warhol’s celebrated Ladies and Gentlemen series, begun in 1975, was the first major thematic series in which the artist used Polaroid photographs as his source images. In contrast to his earlier portraits, the 1970s and 1980s works reveal Warhol’s experimentation with photographic images that he took himself. Surrounded at every turn by Factory groupies, celebrities and socialites, Warhol embraced the advantages of the snap-shot aesthetic provided by the Polaroid camera to capture hundreds of expressions, gestures and moments.

In characteristic fashion, Warhol conceptualized this seminal series through a playful and clever lens; his subjects are ladies in terms of gender and gentlemen in terms of sex. The present work, executed in 1975, is a striking example from the series. The intimacy of the paintings scale complements the intimacy of the interaction between the two figures, the silhouettes of their faces nearly fusing into one. Against a background of rich maroon browns, swipes and swathes of vibrant pink, purple, and blue add a dimension of rich chromatic intensity. Th꧙e area of heavy black impasto that frames the face of the frontal figure distinguishes this painting from Warhol’s ꦕhighly mechanical silkscreened works of the 1960s, effectively belying his infamous declaration “I just want to be a machine.” Traces of the artist’s hand are undeniably present here as Warhol pushes the figure-ground relationship to new extremes, with the dissonance between silk-screened and painted ground implying a further abstraction of the self.

While these glamorous portraits are immediately evocative of the allure of celebrity, they are far removed from the earlier Jackie, Marilyn, or Liz portraits. Instead of celebrating an established icon, the subjects in Warhol’s Ladies and Gentlemen series have no proper names. Thus, the two figures that dominate the🦹 composition of the present work come to represent a theme that was a persistent undercurrent of Warhol’s life and work: the abstract, elusive, and highly desirabl𒈔e notion of fame.