Andy Warhol
Knives, 1981–82
Stamped twice by The Estate of Andy Warhol and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and numbered (on the overlap)
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
236.2 by 186.7 cm (93 by 73½ in.)
69690
© 2023 Andy Warhol Foundation For The Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Executed in 1981–82. Throughout his career, Andy Warhol repeatedly explored the spectacle of death. By the 1980s, growing concern regarding his own mortality became increasingly pervasive and explicit within his...
Executed in 1981–82.
Throughout his career, Andy Warhol repeatedly explored the spectacle of death. By the 1980s, growing concern regarding his own mortality became increasingly pervasive and explicit within his work. Beginning in 1981–82, the artist executed a series of paintings focused on guns and knives, of which the present work belongs. The large-scale painting depicts six kitchen knives, sourced from a restaurant supply shop on the Bowery in New York, that appear as black silhouetted forms hovering against a silvery white ground.
Throughout his career, Andy Warhol repeatedly explored the spectacle of death. By the 1980s, growing concern regarding his own mortality became increasingly pervasive and explicit within his work. Beginning in 1981–82, the artist executed a series of paintings focused on guns and knives, of which the present work belongs. The large-scale painting depicts six kitchen knives, sourced from a restaurant supply shop on the Bowery in New York, that appear as black silhouetted forms hovering against a silvery white ground.
Drawn to the irony of their easy availability and inherent danger, the knives reinforce Warhol’s interest in the ubiquity and banality of certain objects. Instead of selecting a more eccentric or exotic item, he “chose the common object, considered by most as nothing special” and endows it with an impressive yet menacing threat through serial repetition. [1] The impressive scale of the present work reminds the viewer of its potential to enact violence, yet simultaneously Warhol “elevat[es] it to art. Kitchen knives never looked more interesting and beautiful.” [2].
[1] V. Fremont, '‘Galaxy 8’ Slicer' in Andy Warhol, Knives: Paintings, Polaroids and Drawings, New York, 2001, p. 21
[2] Ibid.