Andy Warhol Tattooed Woman Holding A Rose

As one of New York’s most successful commercial artists of the 1950s, Andy Warhol’s signature blotted-line drawing style was highly popular among the art directors of major fashion brands. Warhol would trace a photograph or another source image in heavy ink on a non-absorbent surface and then print it onto paper, resulting in a highly original, expressive line. In Tattooed Woman Holding a Rose, Warhol has ‘tattooed’ the corseted woman’s body with famous logos and brand names as a kind of sales pitch to prospective clients, with his contact phone number scrawled across the front of her outfit. As both a business card and a fine art object, it is a paradigm of Warhol’s unapologetic synthesis of art and commerce.