Andy Warhol is famous for combining art with pop culture. How about art and technology? Warhol embraced the emerging field of digital art, even demonstrating the capabilities of the Commodore Amiga computer at its launch at Lincoln Center in 1985. As part of the event, he created a portrait of rock star Debbie Harry, lead singer of the band Blondie, live in front of the audience.
Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images
This iconic piece showcases Warhol’s pioneering use of digital techniques, marking a departure from his traditional silkscreen methods. It is not only a testament to Warhol’s innovative spirit but also a reflection of the merging of technology and art during the 1980s.
In an excerpt published on ArtNet.com from her 2019 memoir Face It, Harry says about the portrait, “I think there are only two copies of this computer-generated Warhol in existence, and I have one of them.”
Image courtesy Amazon
The other copy, as it turns out, has spent the past forty years in the Delaware home of former Commodore technician Jeff Bruette, who is reportedly selling it in a private sale. He expects it to sell, along with photos from the event, a diskette of digital image files, an Amiga computer, and more related items, for $26 million.
Bruette, who had taught Warhol how to use the Amiga 1000, worked with art dealer Kenneth Mitchell, who had known the artist personally, to authenticate the portrait and create a contract. While working with Warhol, Bruette was initially unfamiliar with his art. When a co-worker mentioned Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s soup work, Bruette assumed that Warhol had designed the actual labels for the line of Campbell’s soup cans. Now, this may not be entirely inaccurate.
While this won’t reach the record price for Warhol’s work, it would fly past the $3.3 million sale price for a group of NFTs made from Warhol’s digital works, sold by Christie’s in 2021. The digital images had been recovered in 2014 by the Warhol Museum working with Carnegie Mellon University.
Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images
Obsessed with celebrity, consumer culture, and mechanical reproduction, Warhol created some of the 20th century’s most iconic images. He drew widely from popular culture and everyday subject matter in his most famous works: his 32 Campbell’s soup cans, Brillo pad box sculptures, and portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, for example. Rejecting the dominant painting and sculpting modes of his day, Warhol embraced silk-screen printmaking to achieve his characteristic hard edges and flat areas of color. The artist mentored Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat and continues to influence contemporary art around the world
With its blend of cultural and technological importance, the portrait of Debbie Harry is poised to fetch a high price, underscoring Warhol’s enduring influence and the ever-evolving nature of contemporary art.
Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry take the stage at the 12-minute mark in the video below.
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