Volume 6 of The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné published by Phaidon
Volume 6, the last of four volumes dedicated to Warhol’s works of the 1970s, documents 741 paintings and sculptures and includes more than 700 supplementary figures of source materials, the artist’s Polaroids, contact sheets, working acetates, and archival photographs of the studio, gallery and museum installations, as well as related works.
“The sheer visual evidence and multiplicity of Warhol’s work during the 1970s overwhelmingly rebuts the myth that after the 1960s, he was an artist in decline,” observes Neil Printz, Editor of the Catalogue Raisonné. “The brilliant succession of series from Mao (1972) to the Shadows (1978-1980) and Reversals (1979–1980), not to mention his portrait paintings, reveal an artist at the height of his powers, a trajectory that continues unbroken until Warhol’s death.”
Volume 6 features Warhol’s epic Shadows project, which consists of 279 paintings and includes the works commissioned and exhibited in early 1979 at the Lone Star Foundation in Lower Manhattan. The Shadows, documented in the first and last chapters, bracket Volume 6 and span the series’ two-and-half-year chronology. The volume closes with the latter phase of this seminal cycle, the diamond dust Shadows from 1979-80, made by scattering ground glass over the inked impression of the shadow.
Volume 6 also explores Warhol’s fascination with Studio 54 and his first series of dedicated gift paintings; and documents his Human Heart canvases, which were produced in tandem with an unrealized mural commission, along with a group of stenciled hearts distributed as gifts.
This volume also records the approximately 200 commissioned portraits Warhol painted in 1978 and 1979 of nearly 50 sitters. Using his Polaroid Big Shot camera, he photographed subjects ranging from close friends like Henry Geldzahler to fellow artists like Paul Jenkins to socialites like the fashion designer Carolina Herrera and celebrities like Liza Minnelli and Truman Capote.
Lastly, Volume 6 introduces Warhol’s use of diamond dust in his late Shadow and Gem paintings in which he experimented with silkscreen ink that fluoresces under ultraviolet light; as well as unique projects such as his hand-painted BMW Art Car.
The Catalogue Raisonné of Warhol’s paintings, sculptures, and drawings was initiated by Thomas Ammann in 1977, when Warhol was at the height of his career. In 1993, six years after Warhol’s death, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts assumed the stewardship of this project. Over 2000 paintings and sculptures of the 1960s were documented in two volumes published by Phaidon Press in 2002 and 2004. Warhol’s nearly 3000 paintings and sculptures of the 1970s have been catalogued in four volumes. Volume 6, published in 2024, is the fourth and last of these volumes. Volumes 3, 4, and 5 were published by Phaidon in 2010, 2014, and 2018, respectively. Five projected volumes dedicated to the artist’s paintings and sculptures of the 1980s and a series of volumes documenting Warhol’s drawings are forthcoming. The Editors and the Catalogue Raisonné team have examined thousands of works of art, reviewed the artist’s archives, and interviewed assistants, friends, and portrait sitters. The Catalogue Raisonné offers an authoritative record of Warhol’s art and an unparalleled narrative of Warhol’s studio.