Lower Torso

“Brandon de Wilde smokes Camels because they are so mild,” declares the speech bubble in Andy Warhol’s Untitled (Lower Torso). Born Andre Brandon de Wilde in 1942, de Wilde was a famous actor who debuted on Broadway at the age of seven. He starred in a popular American television show, Jamie, in 1953 and 1954, and acted in dozens of television, film, and stage roles during his short life. He was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe award in 1953. The young actor died in a traffic accident in 1972.

An early 1950s Warhol self-portrait also features a speech bubble with identical text referring to de Wilde. The ink drawing, in which Warhol is covering his face with his hands, is based on a series of photographs of Warhol taken by Otto Fenn in Fenn’s studio around 1952. Both the drawing and corresponding photographs appear in Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again (De Salvo 2018, 122-24), the book accompanying Warhol’s 2018 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC).

There are a few more portraits in Warhol’s oeuvre from the early 1950s that feature the text “Brandon de Wilde smokes Camels because they are so mild” and appear to be influenced by Fenn’s photographic work. Perhaps Warhol’s Untitled (Lower Torso) was similarly inspired by the social and creative atmosphere of Fenn’s studio.