Portrait of Ina Ginsburg

Warhol's portraits deflect the documentary force of photography, glamourizing the evidence delivered by the lens, reimagining it in ways that can endow a simple headshot with the aura of an impossibly intense individuality. Each of these images presents a self that is completely aware of all that makes it recognizable, distinctive and mortal. That degree of self-consciousness is unattainable, can only be fictional, and yet is thoroughly intelligible. Moreover, it is urgently desirable. Who wouldn't want to live in a world where beautiful people are not simply beautiful but thoroughly alive to the quality, the setting, and the implications of their beauty? In a world like that, sex objects would be comparably alert to every nuance of their sexuality, and unmitigated awareness would mediate between artists and their art, intellectuals and their intellectuality, dealers and their entrepreneurial impulses. A world like that would be a utopia of sorts, and Warhol's portraits picture its inhabitants" (C. Ratcliff, "Looking Good: Andy Warhol's Utopian Portraiture," Andy Warhol Portraits, London 2007, p. 21).