Andy Warhol—
From A to B and 
Back Again

In the series Ladies and Gentlemen (1975), which depicts New York City drag queens and trans women, Warhol engaged more explicitly with drag and the performance of queer identity than in any other paintings he had made since the 1950s. An Italian gallerist commissioned the work and specifically requested that Warhol not focus on cross-dressing or transgender Factory superstars such as Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Mario Montez, who were known personalities. Rather he asked Warhol to make portraits that were more “anonymous and impersonal.” Warhol directed his assistants to recruit models from the Gilded Grape, a Times Square bar where many trans women hung out; the Christopher Street Pier; and other sites in downtown Manhattan. He photographed his subjects using a Polaroid camera, paying each fifty or one hundred dollars per session. The series developed into a very substantial project, comprising hundreds of paintings of various scale, more than sixty drawings and collages, and a portfolio of prints. Adopting a distinctive painterly style for the portraits, he worked directly on the canvases, often with his fingers, to create an unusually layered, textured surface in a wide color palette.