ANDY WARHOL | MOONWALK (SEE F. & S. IIB.404-405)

Warhol’s Moonwalk prints are among the last works that the artist created before his death in February 1987. Intended as part of a portfolio entitled TV that would depict important images from the history of television in America and include subjects such as I Love Lucy, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Moonwalk was the only composition from the series that was printed.

Despite the portfolio’s focus on the influence of television, the photographic basis of the work is not a still from the live broadcast of the first moments on the moon, but rather an image that never appeared on TV. Warhol combined two separate photographs of Buzz Aldrin and the American flag, both NASA stills taken by Neil Armstrong, to create the screenprint. The resulting composition is an iconic element of Warhol’s printmaking that illustrates not only the lasting impact of the moon landing but also the artist’s own profound effect on American visual culture.