Andy Warhol - La ligne et l’image

Andy Warhol. The Line and the Image at the Musée du Luxembourg reveals how this medium, far from being ancillary, accompanies his entire career.

Trained in illustration, the artist never ceased drawing, even after adopting the mechanical processes that marked his work. Drawing thus appears as a constant site of experimentation, where images are constructed and a singular visual thinking unfolds. From a first self-portrait dated 1942 to acrylic drawings for The Last Supper in 1986, Warhol’s drawn production is abundant and varied. Portraits, caricatures, genre scenes, advertising illustrations, self-promotional portfolios: drawing remained his tool of choice until the late 1950s. It allowed him to progressively emancipate himself from the influences of Klee, Picasso, Cocteau, as well as from American artists like Shahn. Through drawing, Andrew Warhola becomes Andy Warhol.

After a period dominated by painting and then cinema between 1963 and 1973, he returns to drawing with new objectives linked to his pictorial production, notably commissioned portraits, among which the Mao portrait is an example. Drawing thus becomes a space of experimentation: it enables chromatic, graphic and conceptual choices, often at a scale close to that of his paintings.

The exhibition is organized around five thematic sections: beginnings as an advertising illustrator, the importance of handwritten script, fascination with faces and masks, gay iconography long kept confidential, and reflections on death, which became an obsession after the 1968 assassination attempt that nearly cost him his life.

The exhibition brings together about 150 drawings, as well as paintings, silkscreen prints on paper, photographs and archival documents. It highlights the artist’s technical inventiveness and the processes he developed (stamps, transferred lines, stencils, collages), conceived for the reproduction and repetition of images. Drawings and documents, rare or overlooked, allow access to the making of the work and to enter the heart of the artist’s New York studio, The Factory, and invite a reconsideration of Warhol’s entire oeuvre from this dialogue between gesture and reproduction, between hand and machine.

An exhibition produced by Grand Palais RMN.

Curated by: Alain Cueff, art historian.

Exhibition design: Véronique Dollfus.