ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) Shoe circa 1955-1957

ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) Shoe circa 1955-1957 stamped with The Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts seals and numbered 343.086 on the reverse gouache and India Ink on paper 3 by 6 in. 7.6 by 15.2 cm. This work is accompanied by a letter from the Museum of Modern Art addressed to Andy Warhol in 1956. Footnotes: Provenance Taglialatella Galleries, New York Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2007 The explosive arrival of Andy Warhol as the champion of the Pop Art movement in 1962 marked a paradigm shift in art and ideology. Through Warhol, the avant-garde became a reflection of the aesthetics of commerce and the power of fame. This pivotal moment had deep roots in his life and career in the decade preceding it. In the 1950s, he was working as a commercial illustrator, drawing shoes for Glamour, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and designer Israel Miller – producing works comparable to the piece presented here. The motif of the woman's shoe is inseparable from the lore of Warhol's practice; a symbol of beauty and aspiration that signified the changing ground on which social and cultural convention stood. It is a subject that Warhol returned to throughout his career, perhaps most significantly in his Diamond Dust Shoes series. His illustrations and early ink drawings are crisp and stylish, and the present work, Shoe, revels in the sophistication of Warhol's natural draughtsmanship. It was this early passage of his career that not only enabled Warhol to pursue his artistic goals towards the turn of the decade, but deepened his near-spiritual approach to the mediated image and salesmanship-as-art. Despite his already-esteemed talent, in 1956 Warhol would submit one of his Shoe pieces to the collection committee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, only to be denied accession by Alfred H. Barr Jr. In a letter of response that October, Barr cites limited storage space for 'a work which may be shown only infrequently' – an unfortunate postulation in hindsight. Shoe is a quintessential example of 1950s Warhol. Associated with a story that has transcended art as one of the great legends of persistence, it captures both the stylistically emboldened approach he had to art-marking, but also the ambition that was driving him. Warhol saw his work on museum walls, the voice of a generation – mercifully, he wouldn't have to wait long for it to be a reality. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing