Andy Warhol
Fellatio, 1978
Screenprint on HMP paper
78.7 x 59cm
Edition no 23/30
12996
Copyright The Artist
Sold
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) was an American artist and one of the defining figures of Pop Art, whose practice transformed the imagery of mass media, celebrity, advertising and consumer culture into...
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) was an American artist and one of the defining figures of Pop Art, whose practice transformed the imagery of mass media, celebrity, advertising and consumer culture into a new visual language. Working across painting, printmaking, photography and film, Warhol repeatedly used mechanical reproduction to collapse distinctions between fine art and popular imagery. Alongside his best-known portraits and consumer subjects, he also produced a substantial body of explicitly erotic work, treating sexuality with the same directness and repetition that characterised the rest of his practice.
Executed in 1978, Fellatio belongs to this more intimate and sexually explicit strand of Warhol’s work. Produced as a screenprint on HMP paper in an edition of 30, the image translates a private sexual act into the flattened, graphic language of printmaking, removing narrative context and concentrating attention on contour, gesture and bodily form. The work reflects Warhol’s longstanding interest in desire, queer identity and the body, themes that had already appeared in his drawings, photographs and underground films of the1960s. By returning to an overtly erotic subject through the repeatable medium of screenprint, Fellatio brings together two central aspects of Warhol’s practice: the candid representation of contemporary sexuality and the transformation of intimate imagery into an editioned, reproducible object.
Executed in 1978, Fellatio belongs to this more intimate and sexually explicit strand of Warhol’s work. Produced as a screenprint on HMP paper in an edition of 30, the image translates a private sexual act into the flattened, graphic language of printmaking, removing narrative context and concentrating attention on contour, gesture and bodily form. The work reflects Warhol’s longstanding interest in desire, queer identity and the body, themes that had already appeared in his drawings, photographs and underground films of the1960s. By returning to an overtly erotic subject through the repeatable medium of screenprint, Fellatio brings together two central aspects of Warhol’s practice: the candid representation of contemporary sexuality and the transformation of intimate imagery into an editioned, reproducible object.
