Andy Warhol

“I'm doing shoes because I'm going back to my roots. In fact, I think maybe I should do nothing but shoes from now on”

Andy Warhol quoted in: Pat Hackett, The Andy Warhol Diaries, New York 1989, p. 306

The present work, created in 1980, is a dazzling example from Andy Warhol’s Shoes; a series which shows Warhol at the height of his powers as he combines the luxuriousness of the 1970s Society Portraits with the subversive wit of the 1960s. Epitomising the artist’s fascination with consumerism and glamour, the present work simultaneously refers to his beginnings as a commercial and illustrator, reflects the hedonistic, glitzy mood of its contemporary context of creation and points towards his more subdued works of the 1980s. Elegiac and celebratory in equal measure, Shoes is a monument to both an era and a scene. Vincent Fremont, the executive manager of Warhol’s studio, reflected on the spectacular subject: “The merger of women’s shoes and diamond dust was a perfect fit… Andy created the Diamond Dust Shoe paintings just as the disco, glam, and stilettos of Studio 54 had captured the imagination of the Manhattan glitterati. Andy, who had been in the vanguard of the New York club scene since the early 60s, once again reflected the times he was living in through his paintings” (Vincent Fremont in: Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Diamond Dust Shoes, 1999, pp. 8-9).

The shoe, as both motif and theme, anonymised beauty and allowed him to explore its implications on contemporary culture, perhaps more subtly than in the portraiture that had occupied him for more than a decade. Arriving in New York in 1949 with the intention of pursuing a career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol’s distinctive, detailed depictions of shoes and other commercial objects could soon be found in magazines and newspapers such as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Throughout the early 1950s, he would be commissioned to create an array of campaigns, including advertisements for Neiman Marcus and Barney's New York, as well as a formative collaboration with Richard Avedon's fashion photos for a Mademoiselle magazine feature, "The Glass Slipper." He achieved success in this field, even being described by Women’s Wear Daily as “the Leonardo da Vinci of the shoe trade” (David Bourdon, Warhol, New York, 1989, p. 42) for his work on a campaign for shoe designer I. Miller and Sons. These illustrations, executed in ballpoint pen and with his distinctive blotted line technique, were highly coloured and whimsical in nature. Accompanied by playful phrases or named after iconic movie stars such as Julie Andrews, these imagined objects held an inhabited quality and personality of their own, recognisable as a key aspect of Warhol’s artistic practice.

The genesis of the Shoes series can be found in a box of shoes sent to the artist by Halston, celebrity fashion designer and close friend of Warhol, to be photographed for an advertising campaign. Warhol was inspired by the “ladies’ shoes in exuberantly disordered compositions that he arranged” (David Bourdon, Andy Warhol, New York, 1991, p. 380); he gathered shoes of all shapes and sizes, some from his own collection, assembling them in his studio at 860 Broadway. Arranging them on plain paper, he took a series of Polaroids, later choosing his favourite compositions for the series.

The series integrates and embodies many key aspects of Warhol’s oeuvre: the impulse to anthologise and categorise the glamourised and consumerist American way of life; his fascination with idolism, sex and commodity; and an enduring desire to constantly innovate. The use of diamond dust in the present work tangibly demonstrates this material innovation. Diamond dust was first presented to him by his chief printer Rupert Jasen Smith in 1979; though enchanted by this new material, true ‘diamond dust’ proved too powdery as a medium. As an alternative, Smith ordered large crystals of pulverised glass from an industrial company in New Jersey. The coarser texture enabled Warhol to achieve the subtly raised, sparkling surface he desired, providing a painterly effect that shimmers and sparkles, a perfect encapsulation of the gleaming glamour of fashion, society and consumption that sits at the core of Warhol’s Pop aesthetic.