A la Recherche du Shoe Perdu Portfolio by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol loved to draw shoes—high heels, pumps, or jeweled stilettos—and they were among his first subjects when he worked as a young commercial fashion illustrator in 1950s New York. Later on, in 1980, once Warhol had achieved fame as an artist, he returned to portraying footwear.

Between 1955 and 1957, Warhol was the sole illustrator for shoe manufacturer I. Miller and made new drawings of shoes each week for ads in the New York Times. À la recherche du shoe perdu celebrates the central role shoes played in his early career and imagination. The title is a riff on Marcel Prousts famous novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past). The captions, with their distinctive cursive lettering, were transcribed by Warhol’s mother, Julia Warhola (or by assistants who imitated her handwriting). Warhol and his friends hand-colored the sheets at coloring parties.

Although best known for his silkscreen paintings, Andy Warhol was also an excellent draughtsman. Drawing was a constant part of his artistic practice. Each of the sixteen images in this portfolio features a shoe centrally placed on the page accompanied by a simple line of text, a verbal-visual composition mimicking the picture and ad copy of advertisements. Each of the works in “A la Recherche du Shoe Perdu” were hand-colored. Andy Warhol’s mother helped developed the phrases that go along with each shoe.

About the Artist:

More than twenty years after his death, Andy Warhol remains one of the most influential figures in contemporary art and culture. Warhol’s life and work inspire creative thinkers worldwide thanks to his enduring imagery, his artfully cultivated celebrity, and the ongoing research of dedicated scholars. His impact as an artist is far deeper and greater than his one prescient observation that “everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” His omnivorous curiosity resulted in an enormous body of work that spanned every available medium and most importantly contributed to the collapse of boundaries between high and low culture.

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