Andy Warhol: Redesign

Double Self-Portrait
1967
Silkscreen on canvas
72 x 72 in
24
ANDY WARHOL, 1928–1987, COMMERCE INTO ART
Golden Shoes, each devoted to film stars such as Mae
West, Judy Garland, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Julie Andrews, James
Dean and Elvis Presley, to authors such as Truman Capote
and to the transvestite Christine Morgan, were received
with approval. He even devoted one set to Margaret
Truman, pianist daughter of President Truman. Sometimes
part of a leg could be seen in a shoe, as in the Mae
West series, but in general these gold-plated profiles of
footwear, intended to represent the stars themselves, were
unadorned by any unnecessary additions. The Madison
Avenue exhibition of 1956 displayed the complete series
of Golden Shoes—a rewarding field for the attentions of
any interested psychologist!
According to Rainer Crone, any traces of the real
Warhol—the artist—are lost in a jungle of anecdotes and
tales. Art critics consciously wove a mystery around his life
and work and reduced his personality to useful proportions
in order to play down the uniqueness of his art. But
Andy Warhol himself was the original source of the tales
that surrounded him—and for a very good reason: you
can only become a star if everybody is talking about you.
Warhol never lost sight of his actual goal: being an artist
and—though he never said so—of being a star, according
to Henry Geldzahler, his friend from early days.