This summer, Château La Coste is pleased to present ‘Voyages avec Warhol’, a series of rare and unique photographic works by American pop art icon Andy Warhol from the James R. Hedges, IV Collection. This selection of more than 40 works brings together examples of the many subject matters that Warhol explored in his prolific career, from the fetishistic to the banal, and from the celebrity glamour of New York to his rural Montauk estate, highlighting the enormous importance of photo-making in the artist’s life.

Warhol’s lifelong interest in photography stemmed from his childhood when he had a dark room in the basement of his parents’ home. As an adult, the artist not only used the camera to document his social life and travels, but also relied on it as a tool to create nearly all his works in other mediums, such as paintings and prints.

Although best known for his use of the Polaroid Big Shot at The Factory, in 1976, Warhol was given a 35mm Minox camera by Swiss art dealer Thomas Amman. This camera became an essential tool in the last decade of the artist’s life, so much so he often referred to it as ‘his date.’ Warhol used that 35mm camera to capture the vibrant energy of the objects, people and circumstances that surrounded him, illuminating them in new ways creating a body of unique black-and-white silver gelatin prints.

‘Voyages avec Warhol’ presents works from across the artist’s career, inviting the viewer to dive into his world and mind, a gateway to explore his passions and curiosities. For example, Warhol is an undeniably queer artist and his fascination with the male nude was most evident in the making of his 1977 series ‘Sex Parts and Torsos’, a selection of which are featured in the exhibition. One of the more profound and personal aspects of his output, this figurative series portrays extreme close-ups of male models in either classical (“Torsos”) or erotic poses (“Sex parts”) and became important source material for prints and paintings of the same subjects.

Warhol was equally captivated by taking images of a broad array of banal objects including toilets, telephones, chairs, room service trays, and chandeliers in hotel lobbies, which for him carried multiple messages. For Warhol, a toilet could simultaneously reference Marcel Duchamp’s readymade sculpture Fountain (1917), its everyday mundane function, or its associations as a place for anonymous male sexual encounters. Other quotidian objects played prominent roles in Warhol’s commercial exploits. Warhol first began as a commercial illustrator in the 1950’s and frequently drew women’s shoes for the department store Bonwitt Teller.

Decades later in the 1980’s, Warhol was engaged by his friend, fashion luminary Halston, to create an advertising campaign for his line of women’s shoes. The original Polaroids of Halston-designed shoes became source material and inspiration for a series of screen-prints, paintings and ultimately wallpaper.

Although Warhol is widely associated with the grit and glamour of New York City, he frequently escaped to the rural outposts of Montauk at the Eastern-most end of Long Island, and Aspen, Colorado, which were opportunities to reconnect with friends and nature. Warhol often visited Aspen in winter including when he was dating Paramount executive Jon Gould, who is seen in one photograph clad in skiing gear amidst a dense snowy white background. Other photographs that are on view depict interior designer and film director Jed Johnson, who became one of Warhol’s lovers after initially being hired to sweep floors at The Factory, in a similarly wintery scene, as well as a totemic snow-laden lamppost decorated with a festive wreath.

Warhol maintained a simple New England beach compound atop a cliff overlooking the Atlantic in Montauk for many years. There, along with his co-owner and film producing partner, Paul Morrissey, Warhol entertained a wide array of artists, co-collaborators, lovers, and friends. Works in the exhibition show fashion designer Halston, artist Keith Haring and Jon Gould enjoying the estate and are an insight into the more personal and romantic sensibilities in Warhol’s output, yet simultaneously allude to his enduring interest in the iconography of celebrity.

‘Voyages avec Warhol’ is presented in collaboration with Hedges Projects of Los Angeles and coincides with the Rencontres d'Arles (3 July – 24 September 2023).

Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh in 1928, and died in New York in 1987. Collections include the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, France; Tate, London; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. Warhol’s work has been the subject of exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the world, including retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1989) and Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin (2001–02, travelled to Tate Modern, London, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2002).

Recent exhibitions include From A to B and Back Again, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018–19); Tate Modern, London (2020); and Revelation, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2021–22). Warhol made sixty experimental films as well as the television programs Andy Warhol’s TV (1982) and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes (1986) and was the founding publisher of Interview magazine.