Andy Warhol Giant Size For Sale

Produced in 1963 for the Popular Image Exhibition at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Giant Size is an exemplary screenprint at the beginning of Warhol’s career, signifying key themes that would permeate the artist’s later oeuvre such as commerce and music.  

The screenprint is a sleeve for a vinyl record of interviews with the artists of the exhibition, amongst them other giants of Pop Art such as Jasper Johns. The boldness of the price and the sleeve’s background of bright, shocking pink colour recalls the ‘One Dollar Bill’ paintings of the same period the and ‘Dollar Sign’ portfolio created in the 1980s, iconography that continues to live in the public imagination for its crass exposition of capitalism. Warhol's aptitude for producing a dynamic stimulating visual for an image that in this case is sparse – a solid colour background and simple text bearing a price, points to Warhol’s roots as a commercial artist – he had been an illustrator for advertisements and innately understood how to catch the eye. 

 Giant Size sets a precedent for Warhol’s Pop Art, both in iconography and in subject matter: the visual language of commerce and money was arguably the most important in the artist’s career.