Cow (F. & S. II.11)

First shown at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1966, Cow marked a pointed provocation in the context of Warhol's own celebrity. After years of producing work that had come to define American Pop art, Warhol replaced his usual wall-hung paintings with wallpaper: a repeating cow's head, garishly coloured and printed on paper rolls. The installation transformed the gallery into something between a pattern showroom and a livestock pen.

The image itself is deliberately banal — a frontal, cropped portrait of a cow rendered with the flat graphic quality of commercial print. The hot pink and chartreuse combination has the brash, synthetic quality of cheap decorative goods, which was the intention. Warhol was interested in what happened to the idea of art when it became wallpaper, and to wallpaper when it was made by a famous artist.

Wallpaper sheets from the 1966 printing carry the printed "Andy Warhol" name along the left edge, alongside "TRIM" markers that reflect the work's function as a repeating pattern. This sheet is unsigned, as issued in wallpaper form. The 1966 Cow is among the earliest and most historically significant works in Warhol's print catalogue.