Andy Warhol: Little Red Book #178

Andy Warhol (1928–87) was a leading figure in pop art, best known today for his iconic Campbell's Soup paintings and his portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Throughout the 1970s, Warhol documented his activities and social milieu using a Polaroid camera. When he died in 1987, he left behind nearly 40,000 Polaroids, many of which he had sequenced and filed in red Holson Polaroid albums. 

These albums are called Little Red Books, a reference to the appearance of the albums and possibly also to Mao Zedong's Little Red Book. The snapshots and portraits contained in the Little Red Books demonstrate the range of Warhol's aesthetic interests, as well as his compulsive desire to collect and organize. The present exhibition includes all nineteen Polaroids from Warhol's Little Red Book #178, dated June 1970.

Little Red Book #178 comprises nineteen Polaroids of friends and celebrities, many of whom were involved in the production of Warhol's film L'Amour (1973), which was filmed in Paris in September 1970. L'Amour was written and directed by Warhol and Paul Morrissey. The film starred Warhol superstars Jane Forth and Donna Jordan, French actor Max Delys, and American actor Michael Sklar; the cast also included Peter Greenlaw and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.