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Lot Essay
Double Torso is one of three "ultra violet" paintings made in the 1960s that question the nature of perceptual reality and are part of Warhol's long term investigation into the legal and visual boundaries of pornography.
Double Torso was executed in January 1967 for a feature organised by Playboy entitled The Playmate as Fine Art which showcased nudes by eleven of the most prominent artists of the day. The image, which has been made in such a way that it only becomes visible under ultra violet light, is a return to the two other "ultra violet" paintings Warhol made in 1963 entitled Bosoms. They were closely related to Warhol's first experiments with film-making and a deliberate provocation of the restrictive pornography laws. As Warhol explained, "My next series will be of pornographic pictures. They will look blank. When you turn on the lights, then you see them - big breasts. If a cop came in, you could just flick out the lights or turn on the regular lights - how could you say that was pornography?" (Warhol quoted in C. Stuckey, "Playboy's Warhol's," Playboy, January 1990, pp. 106-107).
Double Torso relates closely to the films Warhol began making in 1963 such as Blow Job, Sleep and Kiss. Double Torso is particularly similar to the film Blow Job in the way that Warhol has skirted around the legal parameters of producing pornography and yet at the same time created a work whose subject and content is still overtly pornographic. In Blow Job Warhol filmed an act of fellatio by filming only the man's face during the act and up until the moment of ejaculation. Warhol shows us something that is unseen and whose pornographic content is only in our imagination. Double Torso similarly has no pornographic image, indeed no image at all under normal light conditions; the pornography of the work is only present under an unusual light that originates from the extreme end of our range of visual perception. The duality of these works poses the question that Warhol's art often asked about the nature of reality. "All my films are artificial," he said, "but then everything's sort of artificial. I don't know where the artificial stops and the real begins" (A. Warhol quoted in P. Gidal, Andy Warhol:Films and Paintings, 1971, pp. 100-101).
"What's pornography anyway? The muscle magazines are pornography, but they're really not. They teach you how to have good bodies. They're the fashion magazines of Forty-Second Street - that more people read" (Interview with Warhol conducted by L. Kent, Vogue cited in J. Doyle, ed., Pop Out: Queer Warhol, London, 1996, p. 197).
Double Torso was executed in January 1967 for a feature organised by Playboy entitled The Playmate as Fine Art which showcased nudes by eleven of the most prominent artists of the day. The image, which has been made in such a way that it only becomes visible under ultra violet light, is a return to the two other "ultra violet" paintings Warhol made in 1963 entitled Bosoms. They were closely related to Warhol's first experiments with film-making and a deliberate provocation of the restrictive pornography laws. As Warhol explained, "My next series will be of pornographic pictures. They will look blank. When you turn on the lights, then you see them - big breasts. If a cop came in, you could just flick out the lights or turn on the regular lights - how could you say that was pornography?" (Warhol quoted in C. Stuckey, "Playboy's Warhol's," Playboy, January 1990, pp. 106-107).
Double Torso relates closely to the films Warhol began making in 1963 such as Blow Job, Sleep and Kiss. Double Torso is particularly similar to the film Blow Job in the way that Warhol has skirted around the legal parameters of producing pornography and yet at the same time created a work whose subject and content is still overtly pornographic. In Blow Job Warhol filmed an act of fellatio by filming only the man's face during the act and up until the moment of ejaculation. Warhol shows us something that is unseen and whose pornographic content is only in our imagination. Double Torso similarly has no pornographic image, indeed no image at all under normal light conditions; the pornography of the work is only present under an unusual light that originates from the extreme end of our range of visual perception. The duality of these works poses the question that Warhol's art often asked about the nature of reality. "All my films are artificial," he said, "but then everything's sort of artificial. I don't know where the artificial stops and the real begins" (A. Warhol quoted in P. Gidal, Andy Warhol:Films and Paintings, 1971, pp. 100-101).
"What's pornography anyway? The muscle magazines are pornography, but they're really not. They teach you how to have good bodies. They're the fashion magazines of Forty-Second Street - that more people read" (Interview with Warhol conducted by L. Kent, Vogue cited in J. Doyle, ed., Pop Out: Queer Warhol, London, 1996, p. 197).