"A.W. - A.W. R.C." Thirty seven (37) Polaroid images of Andy Warhol at the Factory in 1977

Thirty-seven Polaroid photographs and two swatches of colored paper, rivet-bound into six booklets and annotated in the margins. 10.6 x 8.8 cm. Very good. Bound with brass rivets, each photograph has been encapsulated in Mylar for ease of handling ; the ensemble is housed in a custom black leather etui. [1471]

A breath-taking document of Andy Warhol's creative process at the Factory, circa 1977, including twenty photographs showing Warhol with his own Polaroid camera, shooting images of two unidentified men engaged in acts of an intimate nature for a series known as Sex Parts and Torsos. The other images show the artist mixing and applying pigments in the studio, and cutting red paper, two samples of which are included in the sequence. These six photo-booklets were made by Ronnie Cutrone, Warhol's assistant at the Factory from 1972 until 1980. They come to us via the collection of artist Dickie Landry, who received them as a gift from his friend, Norman Fisher, shortly before Fisher's death from cancer in 1977. As Bob Colacello reminisces in Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up (New York, 1990), "It was eleven-thirty on a spring morning 1977 when I arrived at the office, horrendously hung over from the previous night's blitz of vodka, coke, and Quaaludes, but I wasn't seeing things. That was a hairy arm stuffed up a hairy anus in the Polaroids neatly arranged across the top of my desk. My shelves were lined with other Big Shots of more predictable penetrations: oral-genial, anal-genital, oral-anal -- all male on male, and in extreme close-up. Even on my chair there were half a dozen shots of an engorged penis entering a mustachioed mouth. Andy had been at it again: photographing sexual acts between street hustlers and call boys arranged by Victor Hugo, Halston's friend. It was all for art's sake, of course: the Torso Series, as the paintings made from these photographs came to be called. But around the office we referred to these works in progress as the Cocks, Cunts, and Assholes Series -- very light on the cunts." An incredible collection of never before circulated images showing the Master of Pop at work.