Andy Warhol, Portrait of Emily Fisher Landau, 1984

Narrator: In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol began a series of commissioned portraits of the rich and famous. By the 1970s and 80s, these commissions were a vital, and lucrative, part of his practice. Warhol made this portrait of Emily Fisher Landau in 1984. He used his trademark method of making a color screen print from a Polaroid photograph. With its high contrast and bright flashes of color, the resulting image highlights certain features—lips, eye shadow, earrings, and hair—while downplaying others, such as skin tone. It transforms the sitter into a media celebrity in the style of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley—stars that Warhol had previously captured in portraits using the same process.