Grace Jones
A unique Polaroid photograph by Andy Warhol
Grace Jones is a groundbreaking musician, model, actress, and performer. Born in Jamaica in 1948 (or 1951, according to Jones), she began modeling in the early 1970s and released her first album that same decade.
Andy Warhol and Jones met in the mid-1970s, drawn together by mutual friends and shared interests. Jones appeared in Interview Magazine in 1977 and was featured on the cover in 1984. Warhol took multiple photos of Jones throughout the 1980s (some of which he turned into stitched photo collages); he arranged a meeting between Keith Haring and Jones in 1984 at Robert Mapplethorpe’s studio [1], where Haring turned Jones’s body into a canvas for his body-painting; Warhol was also commissioned by Vogue to photograph Jones that same year. [2] While no one remembers the specific circumstances of their first meeting, Jones recalls in her memoir: “One minute you don’t know him, and then you do.”
Year: 1984
Medium: Unique Polaroid print
Size: 4.25 x 3.25 in (10.8 x 8.1 cm)
Frame size: 8.875 x 11 in (22.5 x 27.9 cm)
Authenticated by the Authentication Board of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (stamp on verso), Foundation archive number on verso in pencil, initialed by the person who entered the works into The Foundation archive.
Provenance:
Estate of Andy Warhol (stamped)
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (stamped)
Long-Sharp Gallery
Andy Warhol and Polaroids
Beginning in the 1960s, Warhol used photography (his or someone else’s) as the foundation for almost all his visual art projects. He typically used a Minox 35 compact to document daily life and a Polaroid camera for his artistic endeavors. He reportedly had at least two Polaroid cameras – a Big Shot and a SX-70 – both of which appealed to Warhol for their immediacy and hands-off production.
Archives of his Polaroids include subject matter that would later become some of his most iconic. Photos of soup cans, shoes, celebrities, and more were taken as a starting point for his paintings and screenprints. One need only think about a quintessential Warhol painting or print to appreciate that his genius was rooted in photography.
Back to Andy Warhol
[1] “Untitled (Body Painting) | Keith Haring.” n.d. https://www.haring.com/!/art-work/199-2.
[2] Tate. n.d. “‘Grace Jones‘, Andy Warhol, 1986 | Tate.” https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-grace-jones-ar00290.