Flowers (black and white) (F. & S. II.104)
Flowers (black and white) (F. & S. II.104)
Signed Print
Andy Warhol
103 x 70cm, Edition of 100, Screenprint, 1974
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Meaning & Analysis
Flowers (black and white) (F. & S. II.104) is a 1974 screenprint by Andy Warhol from the Flowers (hand-coloured) series, depicting a full bloom arrangement in a rounded vase rendered entirely in black line on cream paper. The composition moves between fine outline and dense hatching to suggest form without colour, leaving the print ready to receive individual hand-colouring. The work is signed and from an edition of 100.
Warhol’s Flowers series began in 1964 with the vibrantly coloured screenprints based on a photograph of hibiscus blossoms, works that became among the most recognised in his output. Flowers (black and white) (F. & S. II.104) belongs to a related but distinct body of work: prints produced without colour and intended to be hand-coloured by their owners — a tradition reaching back to botanical illustration and the hand-finished prints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which Warhol was happy to invoke with characteristic irony.
The print depicts flowers in a rounded vase with the loose, confident line drawing that connects to Warhol’s earliest commercial illustration work. Fine outline describes the open blooms and leaves; heavy black hatching fills the vase’s shadow face, creating strong tonal contrast without any secondary colour. A cursive signature appears at lower right. The quality of the line — unhurried, varied in weight — distances the image from mechanical reproduction even as the screenprint process mediates it.
The hand-colouring premise makes each completed impression technically unique, introducing the individual owner’s decisions into a work defined by seriality. At a signed edition of 100, Flowers (black and white) is relatively accessible compared to the more restricted hand-coloured prints in the series, while remaining a formally distinctive work in its unfinished state.
