Andy WarholLove, Sex and Desire

Long before reaching the heights of Pop Art, Andy Warhol produced and exhibited erotic and seductive drawings celebrating male beauty. This book presents more than three hundred drawings, mostly in ink on paper, depicting a multitude of young men, most of them naked, sometimes adorned with black hearts and other charming finery. They rarely look at their attentive observer, just as Warhol focuses on their forms, erotic energies and unbridled sexuality.

Underestimating the pervasive homophobia of the time, Warhol believed that it was with exhibitions of these drawings that he could make his entry into the New York art scene. This publication finally materializes the artist’s plan to make a monograph composed of his elegant drawings, drawn from life. It brings together for the first time the most striking images chosen by the Andy Warhol Foundation as well as by Blake Gopnik, Warhol’s biographer, and Drew Zeiba, art critic. Poems by James Baldwin, Thom Gunn, Harold Norse, Essex Hemphill and Allen Ginsberg create moments of introspection, developing the themes and moods present in the drawings.

Looking at these drawings, make us think of Jean Cocteau’s and even Matisse’s, which are highly distilled, sure of the line but free. As for sneaky voyeurism, it is entirely Warhol’s own, and even the riskiest drawings contain a kind of funny humour – an ironic sense of detachment – that would become a trademark of Warhol. His confident hand illustrates a multitude of colourful characters, but also reveals much about this enigmatic artist.