Self-Portrait
Andy Warhol
American, 1928–1987
1966
A nine-panel self-portrait made with silkscreen ink over synthetic polymer paint, in which the artist repeats and color-variants a photographic likeness to probe celebrity, mechanical reproduction, and the self as image.
Encountering the grid, you notice the same face multiplied and slammed with discordant, candy-bright color shifts that flatten light and shadow into bold planes so the portrait reads like a manufactured, slightly uncanny product rather than a private likeness.
The piece exemplifies Pop Art’s adoption of commercial printing methods to blur art and mass media, using repetition and color to turn individual identity into a circulating visual commodity and reshape ideas about authorship and image-making.
Medium
Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on nine canvases
Dimensions
Each canvas 22 1/2 x 22 1/2" (57.2 x 57.2 cm), overall 67 5/8 x 67 5/8" (171.7 x 171.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Philip Johnson
Accession
513.1998.a-i
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
