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Prince is a 1984 painting by American artist Andy Warhol. It is one of a series of silkscreen portraits of celebrities and prominent figures created by Warhol throughout his career.

Composition

As was common with many of Warhol's celebratory portraits, Prince uses a publicity photograph of the singer as its source material. The painting was made using silkscreen ink and acrylic polymer paint on canvas, an artistic technique popularised by Warhol and synonymous with the artist from the 1960s onwards.

The Genius of Prince

In May 2016 the portrait was used as the front cover image of Conde Naste's The Genius of Prince, a commemorative magazine published in the wake of the musician's death.^[1]

Relationship

Warhol met Prince in August 1986 at the New York dance club The Palladium, during a party hosted by the musician after one of his Madison Square Garden concerts.^[2] In his diary entry of their meeting, Warhol described sitting down at the concert "...just as Prince jumps out naked, or almost, and it's the greatest concert I've ever seen there, just so much energy and excitement." At the party, Warhol described Prince "...in a white coat and pink bellbottoms, like Puerto Rican at a prom, all by himself"; he also described the musician as a gracious host who remembered the names of the many indviduals in Warhol's entourage that night.^[2]

The same party was also attended by Billy Idol; seeing the two men together, Warhol wrote that traditional female stars such as Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe had been supplanted by male stars such as Prince and Idol - a development that Warhol found "...so weird".^[2]

Depictions

Vanity Fair

In April 2016, Vanity Fair re-published an article from its November 1984 issue which featured Warhol's Prince on its cover; Vanity Fair claimed the image captured the recording artist "...at the height of his powers".^[3] The 1984 article was an in-depth critical appreciation of the musician, assessing the impact of his Purple Rain album and film, both of which were released in June of the same year. The album is frequently regarded as Prince's magnum opus; the article began by declaring that Prince had "...finally arrived". The article's original publication date coincided with the start of the recording artist's 98-date Purple Rain Tour.

Andy Warhol Treasures

The portrait also features in Andy Warhol Treasures, a book by Geralyn Huxley, curator of film and video at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Huxley believes Warhol's preoccupation with celebrity portraits stems from the artist's religious upbringing. As a child Warhol attended a local Catholic church which featured an iconostasis, a screen situated in front of the altar featuring large-scale depictions of the faces of the Saints.^[4][5]

Exhibitions

A similar version of the portrait was featured in Warhol Live, a touring exhibition of the artist's work as seen through the lens of music, taken from the collection of the Andy Warhol Musuem. It appeared alongside Warhol portraits of Elvis Presley, the Velvet Underground, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Liza Minnelli, Grace Jones, Deborah Harry of Blondie, and Michael Jackson. The exhibition toured North America and Europe; the exhibition catalogue was written by art historian Paul Maréchal.^[6][7][8][9]

Prince is currently in a private British collection.

References