Coming to DropShop from the collection of the late esteemed curator Kynaston McShine, this drop offers collectors eleven panels of Andy Warhol Cow wallpaper printed for the Museum of Modern Art’s 1989 exhibition Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, organized by McShine when he was the institution’s Chief Curator at Large. The exhibition included Warhol's Cow wallpaper in two colorways plastered around the museum, including this blue and yellow colorway hung in the MoMA cafe. The wallpaper backdropped the exhibition, immersing MoMA’s visitors in Warhol’s iconic Pop aesthetic.
The MoMA retrospective juxtaposed the cows with Warhol's series of pillow-shaped balloons, the Silver Clouds. Museum corridors were plastered with pink and yellow cow print and populated by mirrored mylar balloons, casting the gallery and its visitors in the enchanting gaze of Warhol's cow.
The first iteration of the Cow wallpaper dates back to 1966 at the dawn of Warhol’s early Pop practice. The subject matter was inspired by a conversation between Warhol and Leo Castelli gallerist Ivan Karp, who complained that artists no longer dealt with pastoral scenes. Warhol’s collaborator and Factory assistant Gerard Malanga sourced this cow photograph from an agricultural magazine, which described the animal as possessing "quality and refinement."
Following the 1966 Leo Castelli exhibition, Warhol revisited the pink and yellow wallpaper for his 1968 exhibition at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet. Warhol reprised the wallpaper throughout his career with a blue and orange version exhibited in 1971 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a blue and yellow colorway produced in 1971, and a purple and pink colorway in 1976 for the Modern Art Pavillion at the Seattle Center.
Andy Warhol
Cow (wallpaper), 1989
Screenprint in colors, on wallpaper, with selvage trimmed.
45 x 27.75 in (114.3 x 70.485 cm)
Eleven examples from the collection of Kynaston McShine, from the edition of an unknown size.
$2,600 unframed
