Cow Wallpaper
{{Short description|1966 wallpaper design by Andy Warhol}}
{{Infobox artwork
| image_file=Cow wallpaper - Andy Warhol.jpg
| image_size=350px
| title=Cow Wallpaper [Pink on Yellow]
| artist=Andy Warhol
| year=1966
| medium=Screen print on wallpaper
| accession=
| dimensions={{convert|46|x|28|in|cm}}
| city=North Shore, Pittsburgh
| museum=The Andy Warhol Museum
}}
Cow Wallpaper is a screen print by American artist Andy Warhol in 1966. Warhol created a series of four screen prints from 1966 to 1976.{{Cite web |title=Andy Warhol Cow Wallpaper, 1966 - 1976 (0) |url=https://www.masterworksfineart.com/artists/andy-warhol/cow-wallpaper-1966-1976?srsltid=AfmBOoqUflf-Mp_GK5iGLNK-vdaQYldthyzO_PdfaOC-OR_I8Cq88F1D |access-date=2024-10-07 |website=www.masterworksfineart.com}}
Background
According to Warhol, the inspiration for the cow image came from art dealer Ivan Karp:
"Why don't you paint some cows, they're so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts." (Ivan talked like this.) I don't know how "pastoral" he expected me to make them, but when he saw the huge cow heads — bright pink on a bright yellow background — that I was going to have made into rolls of wallpaper, he was shocked. But after a moment he exploded with: "They're super-pastoral! They're ridiculous! They're blazingly bright and vulgar!" I mean, he loved those cows and for my next show we papered all the walls in the gallery with them.{{cite book |last1=Warhol |first1=Andy |last2=Hackett |first2=Pat |title=POPism: The Warhol 60s |date=1980 |publisher=Harcourt Brace Jovanovich |location=New York |isbn=9780151730957 |page=18 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xtI3AQAAIAAJ}}
The cow image is believed to have come from E.S. Harrison's book, Judging Dairy Cattle.{{Cite book |last=Harrison |first=Edwin S. |title=Judging Dairy Cattle |publisher=John Wiley and Sons |year=1940 |location=New York, NY |pages=24}}
Some art critics have suggested Warhol appropriated the idea from Yayoi Kusama's One Thousand Boats Show (1963). In this installation work, Kusama wallpapered the gallery with 999 identical images of a boat sculpture.{{cite web |last1=Pascutto |first1=Amélie |title=An Art Dialog Between Yayoi Kusama and Georgia O’Keeffe |url=https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/yayoi-kusama-and-georgia-okeeffe/ |website=DailyArt Magazine |access-date=29 March 2025 |date=15 November 2024}}{{cite web |last1=Brownrigg |first1=Megan |title=Gallery Visit: Yayoi Kusama at the Tate Modern |url=https://magazine.urth.co/articles/gallery-visit-kusama-tate-modern |website=Urth Magazine |access-date=29 March 2025 |date=9 June 2023}}
Analysis
The historian and critic Barbara Rose interpreted Cow Wallpaper as a commentary on the nature of art collecting and the character of the institutions where art is displayed. In a review of Warhol's 1971 retrospective show at the Whitney, she observed that cows are a common subject of genre paintings that people display in their homes, and that the wallpaper made the Whitney look like "a boutique". She continued: "Of course the museum has been a boutique for a long time, and people have been treating paintings like wallpaper even longer. But Andy spells it out with his usual cruel clarity."{{cite news |last1=Rose |first1=Barbara |title=In Andy Warhol's Aluminum Foil, We Have All Been Reflected |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ij-_4jJ4oj8C&pg=PA55 |work=New York Magazine |date=31 May 1971 |page=55 |issn=0028-7369 |language=en}}
Exhibitions
Warhol's April 1966 show at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York consisted of Cow Wallpaper in one room, and a second room with Warhol's silver helium-filled Clouds.{{cite web |title=Andy Warhol |url=https://www.castelligallery.com/artists/Warhol/warhol.html |website=Castelli Gallery |accessdate=31 October 2017}}
At Warhol's request, the pink and yellow Cow Wallpaper was used as the backdrop to cover all the walls for his 1971 retrospective at the Whitney in New York.{{Cite news |last=Canaday |first=Joan |date=May 1, 1971 |title=Art: Huge Andy Warhol Retrospective at Whitney |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/01/archives/art-huge-andy-warhol-retrospective-at-whitney-many-familiar-items.html |access-date=October 7, 2024 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}{{Cite news |last=Belt |first=Byron |date=1971-05-04 |title=Warhol Museum Triumph |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-jersey-journal-andy-warhol-retrospec/153647255/ |access-date=2024-10-07 |work=The Jersey Journal |pages=24}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.castelligallery.com/exhibitions/andy-warhol8?view=slider Pictures of 1966 show at Leo Castelli Gallery]
- [http://www.artecapital.net/arq_des-129-o-efeito-breuer-parte-2 Picture of 1971 show at Whitney]
- [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/499047 Version of Cow Wallpaper exhibited at the Whitney, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art]
{{Andy Warhol}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cow Wallpaper}}