Love by Andy Warhol

Love by Andy Warhol

In 1983, Andy Warhol created his Love series, which includes a portfolio of three screenprints on Rives BFK paper. Each screen print depicts a nude couple embracing one another in a different position. The sequence of images seemingly implies a narrative, as if each image represents a different movement leading up to sexual intercourse. While the images are characterized by passion, lust and sexuality, they are not as much pornographic as they are romantic. There are explicit sexual acts depicted nor is an emphasis of naked sexual parts, as there is in Warhol’s 1978 Sex Parts series, which includes prints focalizing on sexual acts and male sex organs. His naming of this collection of prints as his Love series and his depiction of the couple’s full bodies rather than their body parts, also imply deeper meaning beyond sexual intercourse.

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 inspires 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.

A skilled social networker, Warhol parlayed his fame, one connection at a time, to the status of a globally recognized brand. Decades before widespread reliance on portable media devices, he documented his daily activities and interactions on his traveling audio tape recorder and beloved Minox 35EL camera.  Predating the hyper-personal outlets now provided online, Warhol captured life’s every minute detail in all its messy, ordinary glamour and broadcast it through his work, to a wide and receptive audience.