Andy Warhol—
From A to B and
Back Again
Nov 12, 2018–Mar 31, 2019
Flowers
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“I waited until after the election…I was going to make the show all Goldwater if he won, because then everything would go, art would go. But now it’s going to be flowers—they’re the fashion this year. They look like a cheap awning. They’re terrific!”
Warhol began his series of Flower paintings in 1964, taking a highly systematized approach to the creation and display of these works.
Flowers, 1964
Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1964. Fluorescent paint and silkscreen ink on linen, 24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago; gift of Edlis/Neeson Collection, 2015.123. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Warhol used an image of four hibiscus flowers from a magazine and, with the help of assistants, silkscreened it across more than five hundred individual canvases, methodically producing paintings in different sizes and seemingly endless color combinations. In doing so, Warhol mirrored the options that existed in consumer culture—small, medium, large, extra large—and the idea of theme and variation throughout the history of art. When these works were exhibited in Paris and New York in 1964 and 1965, Warhol exploited the serial arrangement and variation in the series by responding to the architecture of each gallery and installing the works in floor-to-ceiling grids, which resulted in an immersive environment.
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Andy Warhol, Acetate mechanical for 82-inch Flowers, 1964. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. 1998.3.4550.1
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Installation view of Andy Warhol (May 1–June 13, 1971). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Photograph by Geoffrey Clements
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Daisy Ad (LBJ 1964 Presidential campaign commercial)
—LBJ Library -
related section 7
Related Artworks
From the Collection