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Lot Essay
‘She took out her wallet and looked through the bill compartment. She then held up a two dollar bill and said, ‘Andy, if you paint me this, I’ll give you a show’
ANDY WARHOL ON A CONVERSATION WITH ELEANOR WARD
‘I started [silkscreening] when I was printing money’
ANDY WARHOL
Two Dollar Bill (Front) is one of Andy Warhol’s very first silkscreen paintings. Executed in the spring of 1962 in silkscreen ink on linen, this solitary, black and white, printed image of a drawing of a two-dollar bill on a empty white stretched canvas background is a simple but potent icon of Warhol’s uncanny ability to render art as commodity and commodity as art.
Today recognised as being among the most famous images in his work - alongside his Campbell’s Soup Cans, Coca Cola Bottles and Marilyns - Warhol’s Dollar Bills, like all these works, have become Pop Art symbols of America and of the Americanisation of culture that appeared to transforming the world in the early 1960s. Symbolising, literally, both the transference of money into art and art into money, at the same time that they paraphrase the art of both the counterfeiter and the currency designer, Warhol’s Dollar Bill paintings were also, appropriately, the works that first led to the artist printing, rather than drawing or painting his imagery.
Warhol’s fascination with the grid, with repetition and with the mass reproduction of imagery had led, shortly before he embarked on the dollar bills, to the creation of a few hand-printed works made using a rubber stamp. These were his Green Shield Stamps and Airmail Stamp pictures. But, the complexity of the dollar bill design was such that it led Warhol inexorably to what was soon after to become his trademark method of production and reproduction: the silkscreening process.
As Nathan Gluck, Warhol’s studio assistant at this time, remembers, Andy, ‘had decided to paint Money. And he was not about to draw rows and rows of money... and then he remembered the fellows … at Tiber Press. … He called them up and asked them if they would make a silkscreen of money… [Because of the illegality of such an act] … they said, “No,” but if Andy made a drawing, they would make a silkscreen of the drawing. So …]Andy ran off and made it serially like that. … From there on, I think, he realized that he could use the silkscreen’ (N. Gluck, quoted in G. Frei and N. Printz (eds.), The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1, New York 2002, p. 131).
Two Dollar Bill (Front) is one of the first of the printed works based on his drawing of a two-dollar bill that Warhol subsequently made. At first Warhol made images using one- and two-dollar bills. Warhol may have chosen the two-dollar bill because of an apocryphal story about a lucky two-dollar bill that the gallerist Eleanor Ward carried around with her and asked him to paint. According to one reminiscence by Warhol, the idea to paint money came to him one evening, when he was with Ward and Emile de Antonio. De Antonio asked the gallerist when she was going to give Warhol a show. According to Warhol, Ward then ‘took out her wallet and looked through the bill compartment. She then held up a two dollar bill and said, ‘Andy, if you paint me this, I’ll give you a show’ (A. Warhol, quoted in A. Warhol and P. Hackett, Popism The Warhol Sixties, New York, 1980, p. 31) Another recollection from this time suggested that the origin of the Dollar Bill series came one evening ‘when I’d asked around ten of fifteen people for suggestions [and] finally one lady friend of mine [this time, another New York gallerist, Muriel Latow] asked me the right question: “Well, what do you love most?” That’s how I started painting money’ (A. Warhol, quoted in A. Warhol and P. Hackett, Popism The Warhol Sixties, New York, 1980, p. 22).
For Robert Rauschenberg, whose move into silkscreening coincided with Warhol’s own move into the medium during this period, Warhol’s adoption of what would become his trademark technique had less to doing with expediency or provocation than with Warhol’s own talent for drawing and his wish to get away from all that had been so good at and for which, as a commercial illustrator, had won him such acclaim. As Rauschenberg pointed out, ‘Andy had a kind of facility which I think drove him to develop and even invent ways to make his art so as not to be cursed by that talented hand. His works are more like monuments to his trying to free himself of talent. Even his choice of subject matter is to get away from anything easy. Whether it’s a chic decision or a disturbing decision about which object he pick, it’s not an aesthetic choice. And there’s strength in that, (R. Rauschenberg quoted in J. Stein, Edie, an American Biography, New York, 1982, p. 189). Hand-drawn and then silkscreen printed on a white monochrome background, Two Dollar Bill (Front) is a singular icon from this decisive and defining moment in Warhol’s career.
ANDY WARHOL ON A CONVERSATION WITH ELEANOR WARD
‘I started [silkscreening] when I was printing money’
ANDY WARHOL
Two Dollar Bill (Front) is one of Andy Warhol’s very first silkscreen paintings. Executed in the spring of 1962 in silkscreen ink on linen, this solitary, black and white, printed image of a drawing of a two-dollar bill on a empty white stretched canvas background is a simple but potent icon of Warhol’s uncanny ability to render art as commodity and commodity as art.
Today recognised as being among the most famous images in his work - alongside his Campbell’s Soup Cans, Coca Cola Bottles and Marilyns - Warhol’s Dollar Bills, like all these works, have become Pop Art symbols of America and of the Americanisation of culture that appeared to transforming the world in the early 1960s. Symbolising, literally, both the transference of money into art and art into money, at the same time that they paraphrase the art of both the counterfeiter and the currency designer, Warhol’s Dollar Bill paintings were also, appropriately, the works that first led to the artist printing, rather than drawing or painting his imagery.
Warhol’s fascination with the grid, with repetition and with the mass reproduction of imagery had led, shortly before he embarked on the dollar bills, to the creation of a few hand-printed works made using a rubber stamp. These were his Green Shield Stamps and Airmail Stamp pictures. But, the complexity of the dollar bill design was such that it led Warhol inexorably to what was soon after to become his trademark method of production and reproduction: the silkscreening process.
As Nathan Gluck, Warhol’s studio assistant at this time, remembers, Andy, ‘had decided to paint Money. And he was not about to draw rows and rows of money... and then he remembered the fellows … at Tiber Press. … He called them up and asked them if they would make a silkscreen of money… [Because of the illegality of such an act] … they said, “No,” but if Andy made a drawing, they would make a silkscreen of the drawing. So …]Andy ran off and made it serially like that. … From there on, I think, he realized that he could use the silkscreen’ (N. Gluck, quoted in G. Frei and N. Printz (eds.), The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1, New York 2002, p. 131).
Two Dollar Bill (Front) is one of the first of the printed works based on his drawing of a two-dollar bill that Warhol subsequently made. At first Warhol made images using one- and two-dollar bills. Warhol may have chosen the two-dollar bill because of an apocryphal story about a lucky two-dollar bill that the gallerist Eleanor Ward carried around with her and asked him to paint. According to one reminiscence by Warhol, the idea to paint money came to him one evening, when he was with Ward and Emile de Antonio. De Antonio asked the gallerist when she was going to give Warhol a show. According to Warhol, Ward then ‘took out her wallet and looked through the bill compartment. She then held up a two dollar bill and said, ‘Andy, if you paint me this, I’ll give you a show’ (A. Warhol, quoted in A. Warhol and P. Hackett, Popism The Warhol Sixties, New York, 1980, p. 31) Another recollection from this time suggested that the origin of the Dollar Bill series came one evening ‘when I’d asked around ten of fifteen people for suggestions [and] finally one lady friend of mine [this time, another New York gallerist, Muriel Latow] asked me the right question: “Well, what do you love most?” That’s how I started painting money’ (A. Warhol, quoted in A. Warhol and P. Hackett, Popism The Warhol Sixties, New York, 1980, p. 22).
For Robert Rauschenberg, whose move into silkscreening coincided with Warhol’s own move into the medium during this period, Warhol’s adoption of what would become his trademark technique had less to doing with expediency or provocation than with Warhol’s own talent for drawing and his wish to get away from all that had been so good at and for which, as a commercial illustrator, had won him such acclaim. As Rauschenberg pointed out, ‘Andy had a kind of facility which I think drove him to develop and even invent ways to make his art so as not to be cursed by that talented hand. His works are more like monuments to his trying to free himself of talent. Even his choice of subject matter is to get away from anything easy. Whether it’s a chic decision or a disturbing decision about which object he pick, it’s not an aesthetic choice. And there’s strength in that, (R. Rauschenberg quoted in J. Stein, Edie, an American Biography, New York, 1982, p. 189). Hand-drawn and then silkscreen printed on a white monochrome background, Two Dollar Bill (Front) is a singular icon from this decisive and defining moment in Warhol’s career.