Gallery: Beyond Soup Cans: Check Out Andy Warhol's Charming Book Art
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*Andy Warhol’s Index (Book)* was neither a famous person’s memoir nor a best-of collection of works. It was something more unusual: a multi-sensory pop-up, pop-out, novelty book that contained a record, a balloon, and disappearing ink.
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It's one of many artifacts on display at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York. The entire exhibit examines Warhol's relationship with the art of book publishing. This child-like illustration is from an unfinished book about a Mexican jumping bean. Warhol worked on it in the 1940's and, according to the exhibit, it's the only remaining book work of his from that decade.
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From 1953 to 1960, Warhol was an unknown, creating dust jacket designs for New York City publishing houses like Simon & Schuster and Doubleday. Here, a book cover for Three More Novels of Ronald Firbank: Vainglory; Inclinations; Caprice, for New Directions publishing.
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Around that time Warhol also did plenty of book design work for pet projects with friends of his. Love is a Pink Cake is one such title.
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Same goes for In the Bottom of My Garden. The text in these is often playfully incoherent.
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In the art, however, you can see early traces of the work that would make Warhol famous. His calligraphic drawings feature saccharine motifs like angels, stars, and butterflies. These icons become slightly sarcastic when they’re used over and over again, like a stamp.
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A Gold Book, from 1957.
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In his later years, Warhol worked on less of these zine-like projects and put out books on photography and writing, with his own name on the cover.
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Through Grove Press, he published A: A Novel, in 1968.
