In the visible light spectrum, Andy Warhol’s White Painting appears to be a minimal blank canvas. However, ultraviolet light, which had become a staple of psychedelic décor by the 1960s, reveals a nude female torso, slightly hunched over fingers that squeeze the figure’s waist. The painting was Warhol’s tongue-in-cheek response to heated national discussions about the legality of “pornographic” images. In a 1963 interview he states: “My next series will be pornographic pictures. They will look blank. When you turn on the black lights, then you see them—big breasts. If a cop came in, you could just flick out the lights or turn on regular lights—how could you say that was pornography?”
Details
- Artist Name: Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987)
- Title: White Painting
- Date: 1964
- Medium: Oil and silkscreen on canvas
- Dimensions: 59-7/8 x 38-1/4 in. (152.1 x 97.2 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Irving Blum
- Accession Number: P.1969.073
- Copyright: © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
[Irving Blum, Los Angeles, gift 1969 to];
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, 1969-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 1975.
Andy Warhol - From A to B and Back Again
- Whitney Museum of American Art, 2018-11-12 to 2019-03-31
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2019-05-18 to 2019-09-02
- Art Institute of Chicago, 2019-10-20 to 2020-01-26
Recent Acquisitions, 1969
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1969-11-24 to 1970-01-18
Works from the Pasadena Art Museum
- Vancouver Art Gallery, 1970-04-14 to 1970-05-10
- Pasadena Art Museum, Recent Acquisitions 1969, 1969, p. 14
- Donna De Salvo, Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, 2018, p. 285
Additional Artwork by Artist
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