1957 | ANDY WARHOL | THE GOLDEN SLIPPERS | WARHOL'S FIRST TIME ON LIFE MAGAZINE

All through the fifties, he tried to have his commercial work taken seriously by showing it in galleries: The Capote show at the Hugo Gallery was followed by a group show at the Loft Gallery in 1954, and two shows at the Bodley Gallery in 1956.
All, including the last—“The Golden Slipper Show or Shoes Show in America” - were ignored by the established art world, dominated by macho Abstract Expressionists like de Kooning and Pollock, and by square intellectual critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. But these elaborate gold-leaf fantasies revealed much about Andy’s ambitions and desires.
Bob Colacello
From: Holy Terror. Andy Warhol Close Up (Harper Collins Publishers, 1990)


1957 | Andy Warhol | CRAZY GOLDEN SLIPPERS
From LIFE magazine |
January 21, 1957

Andy had a real breakthrough with his Crazy Golden Slippers show at the Bodley Gallery in December 1956. These were large blotted-line drawings of shoes painted gold, or decorated with gold metal and foil, like the lacquer furniture he had seen in Bangkok. The distanced, iconographic golden slippers were a distinct contrast to the personal, voyeuristic male portraits he had shown at the beginning of the year and – perhaps consequently – more successful.

He gave each shoe a name: Elvis Presley, James Dean, Mae West, Truman Capote and Julie Andrews, among others, were given shoes that mirrored their characters. Julie Andrews and her husband Tony Walton came to the opening and so did the actress Tammy Grimes. There was less of the gay element.
Victor Bockris
Warhol. The Biography (Da Capo Press, 1989)




1957 | Andy Warhol | Elvis Presley
CRAZY GOLDEN SLIPPERS
Source: LIFE magazine

The show was followed by a two-page colour spread of the Crazy Golden Slippers in Life magazine. Andy had been so worried his work was going to be rejected that he had taken David Mann to Life’s offices with him. ‘Andy kept saying, “Oh God! They’re not going to like these, this is going to be absolutely terrible, they’re going to tear me down,” ’ Mann recalled. ‘He was really sweating it out.’
Victor Bockris
Warhol. The Biography (Da Capo Press, 1989)



1957 | Andy Warhol | James Dean
CRAZY GOLDEN SLIPPERS
Source: LIFE magazine

1957 | Andy Warhol | Kate Smith
CRAZY GOLDEN SLIPPERS
Source: LIFE magazine

1957 | Andy Warhol | Julie Andrews
CRAZY GOLDEN SLIPPERS
Source: LIFE magazine

The socialite D. D. Ryan bought the gold shoe he had dedicated to Truman Capote, and sent it to Truman as a Christmas present with an accompanying note describing Warhol. ‘He’s becoming very well known. Very on-coming,’ she wrote.

‘Even then I never had the idea he wanted to be a painter or an artist,’ Capote recalled. ‘I thought he was one of those people who are “interested in the arts”. As far as I knew he was a window decorator . . . Let’s say a window-decorator type.'
Victor Bockris
Warhol. The Biography (Da Capo Press, 1989)
1957 | Andy Warhol | Truman Capote
CRAZY GOLDEN SLIPPERS
Source: LIFE magazine

1957 | Andy Warhol | Zsa Zsa Gabor
CRAZY GOLDEN SLIPPERS [An actual I.Miller shoe]
Source: LIFE magazine


LIFE magazine got ahold of Warhol's work at an early stage. In 1957 Warhol was working for I. Miller, got some drawings published by Glamour magazine, Harper's Bazaar, The New York Times and already had a few shows under his belt. In spite of this, his second LIFE appearance came only in September 1963.



ANDY WARHOL
POP ARTisan | IT'S ALL ABOUT SHOES

SHOES & ART
1932 - 2011








 

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