No wigs required for this Warhol Xmas card!
His Santa prints are well known, but few Warhol watchers will know this card, made for a favourite restaurant
Andy Warhol liked to have fun at Christmas. We can all picture his Santa Claus images, from his 1981 myths series (which also featured Dracula, Mickey Mouse and Unce Sam), and perhaps even a few of his commercial Christmas cards, which Warhol produced for such clients as the Museum of Modern art, prior to reinventing himself as a fine artist.
Yet, there are a few, more private festive gestures detailed in our books. Back when he was a commercial illustrator, in the 1950s, “he distributed packages of birdseed as Christmas gifts to all his clients,” it's explained in the new version of our book Andy Warhol Giant Size, “with the instruction to plant the seeds and watch the birds grow.”
In the early days, Warhol also made cards for Serendipity 3, one of his favourite restaurants, which also sold some of Andy's unwanted illustrations. This one, above, features the restaurant’s founders Stephen Bruce, Calvin Holt and Patch Carradine, as shaven angels might not seem like the kind of thing that would appeal to Warhol’s Madison Avenue clients, but it hints at the NY demimonde that Warhol would go on to inhabit, and perhaps to Warhol’s own follicle challenges. Here’s to a Happy Hairless Holiday!
For more on Warhol’s early life and later career order a copy of Andy Warhol Giant Size here.