Jon
Not on view
As a young commercial artist in the 1950's, Andy Warhol found great success with his drawings of subjects as varied as shoes and nudes. He rarely made drawings in the 1960s and 1970s, a time when, as a declared leader of the Pop Art movement, he screen-printed photographic images of news events, celebrities, and political figures onto canvases and paper. Returning to drawing in the 1980s, Warhol took graphite pencils and polymer paint to paper, creating simple line drawings as preparation for paintings of famous Western personalities for a series entitled Cowboys and Indians. This drawing, done a few years earlier, reveals that Warhol had been making portraits of friends in much the same vein, stripping the human image to its essentials. The sitter's identity is known only as "Jon" as Warhol has inscribed the sheet, causing speculating on why the artist drew the face without features. Did he want the sitter's identity to remain a mystery, or was it an indication of Jon's vacuous personality?
- Artist
- Andy Warhol
- Title
- Jon
- Date
- 1982
- Object Type
- Drawing
- Medium
- Graphite on paper
- Dimensions
- 31 1/2 x 23 1/4 in. (80 x 59 cm)
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts Endowment Fund
- Accession Number
- 2000.82