ANDY WARHOL, LINCOLN CENTER TICKET, SIGNED SCREEN PRINT ON DIE-CUT OPAQUE ACRYLIC, 1967
This screen print by Andy Warhol, Lincoln Center Ticket from 1967 shows a brightly coloured image of the entrance ticket for the New York Film Festival at the Lincoln Center. Originally produced as one of 500 posters, Warhol was commissioned to create this image to commemorate the Fifth New York Film Festival at the Lincoln Centre in New York. During this time, following his ‘retirement’ from painting in 1965, Warhol began to create both commercial and avant-garde films, hence his interest in New York Film Festival.
Much like his Campbell’s Soup Cans paintings, Lincoln Center Ticket shows an almost exact replica of the source image that Warhol was working from. Adopting the typographic vocabulary of mass advertisement and consumer culture, this print elevates the everyday object into the realm of fine art. Warhol uses brilliant hues of colour to create the screen printed ticket with which he adds a vibrant flower pattern, before adding the bold black text on top.
Through enlargement of scale, beautiful colour palette and bold line, Warhol creates a piece of iconic Pop Art out of a mass-produced object that many people throw away after use. Using his renowned screen print method to produce his prints in a ‘machine-like’ fashion, Warhol replicates the way in which these tickets will to have been printed on a mass scale for the film festival. Lincoln Center Ticket works to aestheticize mass culture and challenge traditional concepts of the value of fine art.
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ABOUT ANDY WARHOL
Andy Warhol (born Andrew Warhola) is a name synonymous with the celebrity culture and mass consumerism which coloured the boulevards of New York City in the Post World War II era. Born into a working class immigrant family in the urban landscape around the bustling metropolis, Warhol’s early life was characterised by a climb up the capitalist rungs of society.
The artist himself noted, “buying is more American than thinking, and I’m as American as they come”, this quote came to demarcate Warhol’s artistic practice as he embraced the commodification of the American Dream. The Pop artist’s beginnings in the business sector gave him the practical skill set to experiment with a more commercial approach to art throughout his career, particularly with regards to screen printing. Read more about Andy Warhol.
