Andy Warhol Shoes Portfolio (Deluxe Edition) (F & S II.248 - 252) For Sale

Shoes is a portfolio of five screenprints with diamond dust published by the artist in 1980. Known colloquially as the ‘diamond dust shoes’ this portfolio is remarkable for both its importance to the artist’s biography and lustrous appearance. This deluxe portfolio comes from a rare edition of ten with one printer’s proof. 

Each screenprint depicts a number of shoes of varied styles (stiletto, pumps) and materials (leather, velvet) laid differently. The multitude of textures and designs expresses an aesthetic decadence that is compounded by Warhol’s use of diamond dust. Warhol’s artistic decision to have such a low contrast between the very dark grey background and blackness of the shoes ensures that the glimmer of the diamond dust really illuminates the shoes in a way so that they might be mistaken for being placed amongst star’s in a night sky. Indeed to understand the artist’s ethereal treatment of these feminine accessories, it is necessary to return to Warhol’s beginnings as a commercial illustrator. 

Many years before he had a successful career as an artist, Warhol worked as an artist for fashion advertisements: mostly for shoes. His first assignment was drawing shoes for New York’s glamour magazine in 1949, and he recalled that he would often review his shoe drawings, saying ‘I lived by the number of shoe drawings – when I counted them I knew how much money I had.’ Though they were for commercial purposes, Warhol’s early shoe series A La Recherche Du Shoe Perdu (1955) exemplifies the decorative power instilled in drawings of footwear. Each shoe has a distinctive personality and was carefully hand-coloured. Even when Warhol had long left his career behind as an illustrator, he would frequently return to shoes as a motif, unsurprising considering that glamour, beauty, and sexuality were key themes in his work particularly in portraits of the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. The high heel or stiletto heel, as seen in the present portfolio, particularly symbolises femininity and sexuality without the need for an icon.  

Returning to the subject relatively late in his career, Warhol’s Shoes portfolio is important as it encompasses on of Warhol’s most favourite and personal motifs, as well as the new mediums that Warhol had developed over his career as an artist. A proponent of reappropriated imagery, Warhol has worked with original polaroid photographs and his silkscreening process as opposed to illustration.