Andy Warhol - Moonwalk
photo: sotheby’s
Warhol’s Moonwalk prints are among the last works that the artist created before his death in February 1987. Intended as part of a portfolio entitled TV that would depict important images from the history of television in America and include subjects such as I Love Lucy, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Moonwalk was the only composition from the series that was printed.
Despite the portfolio’s focus on the influence of television, the photographic basis of the work is not a still from the live broadcast of the first moments on the moon, but rather an image that never appeared on TV. Warhol combined two separate photographs of Buzz Aldrin and the American flag, both NASA stills taken by Neil Armstrong, to create the screenprint. The resulting composition is an iconic element of Warhol’s printmaking that illustrates not only the lasting impact of the moon landing but also the artist’s own profound effect on American visual culture.
Screenprint in colors, 1987, with the printed signature and numbered 40/160 in pencil (total edition includes 31 artist's proofs), signed in pencil on the verso by the executor of the Andy Warhol Estate, Frederick Hughes, the printer, Rupert Jasen Smith, and the publisher, Ronald Feldman, on Lenox Museum Board, with the blindstamps of the printer and publisher, framed
sheet: 962 by 963 mm 37⅞ by 37⅞ in
