Andy Warhol of the Month
Long-Sharp Gallery specializes in works on paper and photography by Andy Warhol. Each month our staff selects a work from our inventory that highlights something about Warhol’s life or interests and discusses it here.
California Condor
Year: 1986
Medium: Silkscreen inks on colored paper collage on colored paper
Size: 18.5 x 12 in (47 x 30.5 cm)
Frame size: 23.625 x 19.75 in (60 x 50.1 cm)
Reference: F.S.III.52; Vanishing Animals p. 11 (No prints were made from this illustration.)
Provenance:
Estate of Andy Warhol (stamped)
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (stamped)
Long-Sharp Gallery
Authenticated by the Authentication Board of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (stamp on verso), Foundation archive number on verso in pencil, initialed by the person who entered the works into the Foundation archive.
About this work: In the 1980s, Andy Warhol embarked on several projects focused on animals, including among them his series of Vanishing Animals and Endangered Species, a suite. Studies and screenprints of Vanishing Animals led to an eponymous book created in collaboration with German conservationist Kurt Benirschke of the San Diego Zoo. [1] The study drawings presented here depict animals included in the Vanishing Animals project.
Warhol’s interest in endangered animals was in some ways an extension of themes Warhol had explored throughout his career. As gallerist Fergus McCaffrey posits in the catalog accompanying the 2006 exhibition Andy Warhol – Vanishing Animals [2]:
"Warhol’s concern about the death of entire species of animals fits neatly into the lexicon of untimely and unseemly ends that he repeatedly mused on during his long career. Bearing in mind the self-referential nature and frequent quotation of his own earlier work in much of the output of the 1980s, it does not take much of a leap to imagine Warhol making a connection between the suicides, car crashes, poisonings, executions, and pervasive threat of nuclear annihilation of the 1960s and the tragic plight of Vanishing Animals in the 1980s. After all, extinction is just another variety of death, and one gets the sense that Warhol was sensitized to care equally for man and beast."
It was estimated that at the time of this work’s release in 1986, fewer than several dozen condors existed. In the year that followed, conservation efforts were made to breed what were then a mere 27 birds. [3] According to a recent 2023 estimate from the National Park Service, the condor population has reached 561. [4]
View more works by Andy Warhol
Cited:
[1] Kurt Benischke and Andy Warhol, Vanishing Animals (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986).
[2] Fergus McCaffrey, Andy Warhol: Vanishing Animals (St. Barthélemy, French West Indies: Me.di.um, 2006).
[3] “California Condor.” CDFW. Accessed November 16, 2023. https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Birds/California-Condor.
[4] “World CA Condor Update – 2022 Population Status (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, March 29, 2023. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/caco-world-2022.htm.