Brillo Soap Pads Box

Details

Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Brillo Soap Pads Box
silkscreen ink and house paint on plywood wrapped in original plastic
17 x 17 x 14 in. (43.3 x 43.3 x 35.6 cm.)
Executed in 1964.

Provenance

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Literature

I. Sandler, American Art of the 1960s, New York, 1988, no. 40 (illustrated).
G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, vol. 02A, New York, 2004, p. 73, no. 631 (illustrated in color).

Exhibited

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Charles H. Carpenter, Jr.: The Odyssey of a Collector, March 1996-March 1997, p. 79 (illustrated in color).
Ridgefield, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Charles H. Carpenter, Jr. Collection: Fifty Years of Supporting the New, September-December 2002.

Lot Essay

Always alert to an opportunity to live with interesting sculpture, Charles Carpenter asked Leo Castelli to request a Brillo Soap Pads Box from Andy Warhol in 1964. It completed a venerable trio of works by Warhol that provided lasting satisfaction and great interest for many years in the Carpenter home. Of his beloved Brillo Soap Pads Box, Carpenter said, "Although I am quite aware of the Duchampian implications of Andy Warhol's Brillo Box, I have never really been able to explain to myself why I like this "dumb" object so much. I am not only fond of it but also have never had any doubts that it is a work of art."
-Susan C. Larsen, Ph.D.

Brillo Soap Pads Box

Lot Essay

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