Andy Warhol Prints to Buy Now: The Middle Range

There’s always been interest in the high end and low-end Warhol prints. But lately it’s the middle range prints which have been attracting particularly strong interest. The question is how do you define a “Middle Market” Andy Warhol print? For this article, I would define it as a print which sells in the $25,000-$75,000 range. The “Upper Market” might be defined as prints over $100,000. The “Lower Market” would encompass prints which are available for $10,000-$25,000.

Cowboys And Indians

If you’re interested in acquiring Warhol prints in the Middle Market, a compelling idea is to buy a pair of your favorites prints that are “spiritually” related. For example, the Cowboys And Indians series was conceived as part American history and part Hollywood. These divergent viewpoints merged with two prints; Sitting Bull and General Custer. As everyone knows, the two fought each other in the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876). As everyone also knows, the American Indians won the proverbial battle but lost the war. When the American government learned of the massacre, their plan to eradicate the American Indian took on a new ferocity. By 1890, the Native Americans were defeated and forced to live on reservations. Hanging Sitting Bull and General Custer together would create a frisson resonating with art history and American history.

Mao & Vote McGovern

There are other potentially fascinating Andy Warhol Middle Market print pairings, such as hanging a Mao with a Vote McGovern (which portrays Richard Nixon, the man who opened a dialog with Mao and China). Vote McGovern shows Andy at his edgiest. Allegedly, after Nixon won the election he exacted his revenge on Warhol by ordering the (American) Internal Revenue Service to audit him every year. As for the Mao prints, they have always been a tantalizing combination of visual impact and edgy intellectual content. They are also among the finest Middle Market Warhol prints. In fact, the portfolio of ten different Mao images may arguably be the most consistent of all Warhol sets; there’s not a weak image among them. With all of this in mind, there’s no reason why the Maos shouldn’t graduate to the Upper Market Warhol prints.

The Annunciation, 1472

Another Middle Market strategy, that should also pay off financially, is acquiring a pair of The Annunciation, 1472 prints from Details Of Renaissance Paintings. By juxtaposing two of them, you not only can enjoy the Warhol repetition factor, but you also get to experience why Andy is an underrated colorist. While the four different prints which comprise the Details of Renaissance Paintings series have particularly vibrant colors, The Annunciation, 1472’s various palettes really sing.

There has always been considerable controversy over the startling variety of colors Andy utilized in his late silkscreens, specifically those printed by Rupert Jasen Smith. He would show Warhol a wide variety of color trial proofs and have Andy pick his favorite for the edition. Rumor had it that Andy would sometimes not even bother to look at the proofs in person and “phone in the results” – which is to say he let Smith determine each print’s colors. One source of the rumors may have been Smith himself, who was known to take liberties in the work he did for Andy. This is not to disparage Rupert Jasen Smith. He was a great printer who deserves much credit for the high quality of Warhol’s late graphics.

Personally, I never fully bought into this theory of Smith calling the shots on Warhol’s prints. Despite his image of someone out gallivanting every night at Studio 54, he was a hard worker who took his art quite seriously. Smith may have been responsible for opening Warhol up to colors he never previously used. But at the end of the day, the final decisions were Warhol’s. Viewing The Annunciation, 1472, gives you a clear perspective on how Warhol’s sense of color evolved from the 1960s to the 1980s, becoming far more adventurous. It is this same sense of adventure that a collector can enjoy by acquiring a pair of Warhol prints from the same series.

The current gravitational pull of the print market, in general, is that collectors are looking for stability. In tricky times, collectors have traditionally sought out those artists with the highest batting averages. Every major artist from Jasper Johns to Robert Rauschenberg have produced great prints in all price ranges. But the triumvirate of Warhol, David Hockney, and Roy Lichtenstein have produced a particularly strong body of Middle Market prints. Not only are all three of these artists a safe bet, regardless of world economic conditions, but their consistency allows the collector to buy their work (almost) risk free.