Andy Warhol's Myths Series: Was It His Most Personal Work?

MyArtBroker’s Andy Warhol specialists Jess Bromovsky and Louisa Earl take a closer look at Myths by Andy Warhol, one of the artist’s most distinctive late portfolios and a series that asks a more personal question: was this Warhol’s most autobiographical body of prints?

Published in 1981, Myths consists of ten screenprints depicting fictional, folkloric, and culturally symbolic figures including Superman, Mickey Mouse, Dracula, Santa Claus, the Wicked Witch of the West, Uncle Sam, Mammy, and Warhol himself as The Shadow. After decades spent depicting celebrities, consumer goods, and the defining imagery of post-war America, Warhol turned in Myths to the characters and archetypes that shaped the American imagination long before celebrity became real.

In this Specialist Insights discussion, Jess and Louisa examine what visually defines the portfolio, from pose, costume, colour, cropping, and composition to Warhol’s distinctive use of diamond dust. The conversation looks at how each character is staged as a performance, and how Warhol applies the visual language of celebrity portraiture to figures drawn from cartoons, cinema, folklore, advertising, and national mythology.

The episode also considers the personal dimension of the series. Many of the characters in Myths can be connected to the image-world of Warhol’s childhood, when periods of illness kept him away from school and comic books, Hollywood magazines, and popular entertainment became a formative way of engaging with the outside world. Figures such as Superman and Mickey Mouse were not simply pop culture references for Warhol; they belonged to the visual language through which he first encountered ideas of transformation, performance, and fame.

Unlike many of Warhol’s earlier works, which drew heavily on found media imagery, several prints in Myths were based on photographs staged by Warhol himself, using actors and friends to perform these roles. Margaret Hamilton, for example, reprised her role as the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. This process marks an important shift: Warhol was no longer only reflecting celebrity culture back to itself, but actively constructing the image before transforming it through screenprint.

The discussion also explores the more complex cultural and political dimensions of the portfolio. Alongside comic book heroes and cinematic villains, Warhol included figures such as Uncle Sam and Mammy, both of which carry charged histories within American visual culture. In this sense, Myths is not only about fantasy or nostalgia, but about how collective identities are built through images, repeated until they become culturally fixed.