Warhol The Bazaar Years {Part 1}

Last week I visited my old stomping ground, Hearst Magazines, for a meeting. On my way out I decided to check out what was on display in the gallery. I'm glad I did because it turned out to be a fantastic exhibit of artist design spreads for Harper's Bazaar by Andy Warhol. "This exhibition of Andy Warhol's work starting in the 1950's for Bazaar is relatively unknown and unique. " (Anthony T. Mazzola, exhibit catalogue)

The exhibit consisted of large scale reproductions of the original pages and spreads from vintage issues of the magazine. (A great job by Simon Alexander who directed the duplication of the images as they originally appeared. I always enjoyed working with Simon when I was at Hearst!)

While working for Bazaar Warhol created hundreds of illustrations but most of the works no longer exist, as it was not usual to return artwork to the artist and Bazaar does not have an artwork archive. The illustrations only survive within the spreads of the vintage issues.

While at Bazaar Warhol became well known for his shoe drawings. But in addition to the shoes he drew lot of accessories, beauty products, perfumes, butterflies, garments and cats.

Unfortunately the Hearst Tower is not open to the public, otherwise I'd tell you to go check out this show. I'll post some more images from the show tomorrow.