Mick Jagger (complete set)

Across the ten sheets of Mick Jagger, Warhol varies a small group of photographs of the singer, shown head-on, in profile, looking up, or with his hands clasped beneath his chin. Over each image he lays jagged, torn-looking shapes in gold, grey, black, pink, mint green and navy, so the colour falls across the face in patches rather than filling it neatly. In one sheet, his face is flushed bright pink with red lips; in another, a large black shape almost hides him entirely. Fine drawn lines trace his hair, jaw and hands, sometimes sitting on top of the photograph and sometimes replacing it. Warhol’s signature sits in the lower margin of each sheet, with Jagger’s at the lower left.

The two had known each other since the 1960s, Warhol designing the cover for the Rolling Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers. For this series, he worked from photographs he took of Jagger in 1975. The torn-paper effect and drawn line mark a move away from the flat, clean colour of his 1960s portraits. Signed by both artist and subject, the set is one of the best-known portraits of the rock era, and a rare record of a friendship between two of its central figures.