After Andy Warhol
(American, 1928-1987)
Pink Cow Wallpaper
serigraph in pink, yellow and black on adhesive wallpaper roll
approximately 90 x 24in (228 x 61cm)
Provenance:
Property from a Private Southern California Collection.

Footnote:
This was an extra wallpaper roll from a later museum exhibition. The wallpaper was manufactured and specially created for a one time use for the installation of the Warhol Show. It was intended to be displayed but ended up not being used.

The Pink Cow Wallpaper was the first of a series of wallpaper designs that Andy Warhol created from 1966-1980s.

According to Warhol, the inspiration for the cow image came from art dealer Ivan Karp
He supposedly asked Warhol, "Why dont you paint some cows, theyre so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts." To which Warhol later commented I dont know how "pastoral" he expected me to make them, but when he saw the huge cow heads — bright pink on a bright yellow background — that I was going to have made into rolls of wallpaper, he was shocked. But after a moment he exploded with: "Theyre super-pastoral! Theyre ridiculous! Theyre blazingly bright and vulgar!" I mean, he loved those cows and for my next show we papered all the walls in the gallery with them.

The exhibition Warhol refers to was the April, 1966 show at the Leo Castelli Gallery, which consisted only of Cow Wallpaper in one room, and a second room with Warhols silver helium-filled Clouds.

The historian and critic Barbara Rose interpreted Cow Wallpaper as a commentary on the nature of art collecting and the character of the institutions where art is displayed. In a review of Warhols 1971 retrospective show at the Whitney, she observed that cows are a common subject of genre paintings that people display in their homes, and that the wallpaper made the Whitney look like "a boutique". She continued: "Of course the museum has been a boutique for a long time, and people have been treating paintings like wallpaper even longer. But Andy spells it out with his usual cruel clarity." - from Wikipedia and other sources.

Very good overall; with some minor bumping and creasing to corners and edges. Multiple images bright and clear.