Andy Warhol

Artist: Andy Warhol
Title: Giant Panda
Medium: Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board
Size: 38" X 38"
Date: 1983
About the Artist: Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, he planned to study art education at the University of Pittsburgh to pursue a career as an art teacher, but he instead enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, where he then studied commercial art. Warhol earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in pictorial design in 1949, and later that year, he moved to New York City and started a career in magazine illustration and advertising. During the 1950's, Warhol gained popularity for his ink drawings of shoe advertisements. He began exhibiting his work during the 1950's, holding exhibitions in New York City and Los Angeles.

During the 1960's Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American objects such as dollar bills, Campbell's Soup Cans, and Coca-Cola bottles, celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as newspaper headlines. During these years, he founded his studio, "The Factory", gathered about him a wide range of artists, writers, musicians, and underground celebrities, and his work became incredibly popular yet controversial. Warhol died in Manhattan on February 22, 1987. According to news reports, he had been recovering from a routine gallbladder surgery at New York Hospital before dying in his sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia.

Statement: The vibrantly coloured screenprints were described by Warhol as ‘animals in make-up’.
Séverine Nackers, Sotheby’s head of prints in Europe, said: “I think he was making a statement by representing these animals in the same way as Monroe, the Queen, and Muhammad Ali. He wanted to highlight the issue of them disappearing.”

About the Work, etc.: Though Warhol is so well known, work such as Giant Panda (and the rest of the series) still often go under the radar. The Endangered Species portfolio was commissioned in 1983 by Ronald and Frayda Feldman, long-time political and environmental activists who support innovative art projects and installations through their art gallery, Ronald Feldman Fine Art, New York. According to the Feldman's, the idea for the portfolio emerged after conversations with Warhol about ecological issues that included a discussion about beach erosion. Warhol was always interested in animals and when Ronald Feldman proposed the idea, Warhol embraced it.

Warhol's Giant Panda shows a different light on what can be considered animal abuse. The pieces were made in response to environmental problems, yet many people don't stop to think that our abuse of the environment in turn causes harm to animals, and Warhol wanted to highlight this. The animals in his bright prints are, or were at some point in time, almost extinct due to the actions of our society. Physical harm is being done to these creatures, even though it may not be direct or intentional, and that is what pieces like this bring to light.