Andy Warhol - Do it Yourself (Violin) [1962]

This work is an extraordinarily rare and important drawing by Andy Warhol, dating from the most pivotal year of his career. Executed in pencil and crayon, it is related to a series of five major paintings that Warhol based on “Do-It-Yourself” colouring sets published by Venus Paradise, a company that also manufactured a popular brand of coloured pencils.

 

Warhol’s treatment of his appropriated source, however, is a radical conceptual move. He leaves the colouring procedure deliberately visible, employing only seven of the seventeen prescribed hues, red, brown, orange, blue, black and two yellows, to fill in selected sections of violin, apples, bowl, knife, and a partly-shaded glow of yellow drapery in the background. The rest of the image consists of blank scaffolding of monochrome outline. The numbers designating the colour for each section are scrupulously reproduced, emphasising the apparent withdrawal of artistic expression in favour of following instructions - a sly jab at the prevailing Abstract Expressionist painterly idiom of the time, which favoured unbounded gestural and emotional freedom.

 

[Christie’s, New York - Graphite and coloured pencil on paper, 76.2 x 101.6 cm]

Done