Andy Warhol’s Ginger

Driving by the Weidman Gallery on Santa Monica Blvd. yesterday, I nearly rear-ended a car.  Behold what was in the window, Andy Warhol's Chanel No. 5 poster.  It's over 5 feet tall and it's spectacular!

It reminded me that I've been meaning to post one of the treasures I discovered while working on my film Dogs in Art, Andy Warhol's Ginger.

I've done a lot of research on Andy Warhol's dogs via the Web, and I've never seen this image before.  I like to think I am debuting on the Internet today.  Btw, I found it in the book Best in Show: The Dog in Art from the Renaissance to Today by Edgar Peters Bowron, Carolyn Rose Rebbert, Robert Rosenblum, and William Secord.

The painting was done originally for Peter Brant who owned the beautiful Cocker Spaniel and was Warhol's friend and Interview partner.  After seeing the finished work, he encouraged Warhol to focus on pet portraits as a new revenue stream.  This lead to Warhol using stuffed animals as subjects (not toys but taxidermy).  Not exactly what Brant had in mind, I bet, but creative none-the-less.  Read more about Warhol's dog (and cat) paintings in Vincent Fremont's 2006 article on Artnet.

Looking at a Warhol I have never seen before, as well as drooling over his Chanel No. 5 poster in the window, reminds me anew how brilliant Warhol was with color.  Sometimes I get desensitized to his mega-talent because his images are so iconic.  They are almost hard to see anymore, because I can view them in my mind's eye without really bringing a fresh look to them.

Ginger is just perfect and so are the Chanel silkscreens.  All the hype aside, Warhol really was a true genius. 

If you're in Los Angeles, stop by the Michael Kohn Gallery for their current exhibition of Andy Warhol's black and white photographs from 1976-1987.  I'm trying to find out if there are any dogs in the show.  I will let you know.

In other news, color lovers – like Rebecca Collins — will enjoy two great color links I found today:

ColorFlip.com by Rafael Rozendaal is a mesmerizing Friday time waster via Angie McKaig's blog (she's the CEO of the Pampered Puppy, but this blog is more web biz than puppy bling.)

And Katherine Tyrrell's recent super-comprehensive post, Describing a Color Space – There's More Than One Color Wheel, on her informative Making a Mark blog.