Liza Minnelli
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- Place made
- New York, United States of America
- Medium
- Polaroid™ Polacolor Type 108
- Dimensions
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9.5 x 7.3 cm (image)
10.8 x 8.5 cm (sheet) - Credit line
- V.B.F. Young Bequest Fund 2012
- Accession number
- 201210Ph41
- Signature and date
- Artist's blindstamp in margin, l.c.- l.r., "© ANDY WARHOL".
- Provenance
- The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York, 1987-2012.
- Media category
- Photograph
- Collection area
- American photographs
- Copyright
- © Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. ARS/Copyright Agency
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WALL LABEL: Andy Warhol and Photography: A Social Media, 2023
Warhol’s published diary for 17 February 1978 notes that ‘Liza came to the office today to have her portrait done’. ‘Liza’ was the actress and singer Liza Minnelli, who became an important member of Warhol’s inner circle in the late 1970s.
This Polaroid was one of many taken on the day of the photo shoot, for which Liza posed in several different outfits. In this image, she is dressed in her red-sequined Halston costume from the Broadway play The act.
Warhol’s grainy video Factory Diary from that day (on the adjacent wall) captures some of the costume changes and excitement of the day. Warhol remembered that the whole staff stopped work to watch her that day, as ‘whenever Liza walks into a room everything stops and people wait for the act to begin’.
Warhol selected one Polaroid from the day as the basis for his screenprinted portrait paintings of Minnelli, as well as for a small number of screenprints on paper (see adjacent work), and the cover of her record Liza Minnelli Live at Carnegie Hall.
Julie Robinson, Senior Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs
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A leading figure of the American Pop Art movement of the 1960s, Andy Warhol is regarded as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. During the 1970s Warhol perfected a method of portraiture, whereby he used Polaroid photographs as preparatory images for his screenprinted paintings. The Polaroid camera helped to simplify the image for the screenprinting process and was ideal in Warhol’s quest for making timeless and beautiful images of his sitters. As he commented: ‘this camera … dissolves the wrinkles and imperfections’. Warhol accentuated this effect by asking many of his female subjects to have white make-up applied to their neck and face, as seen in this image of his close friend, the actress and singer, Liza Minnelli.
This intimate Polaroid of Minnelli, dating from 17 February 1978, is not a direct study for a screenprint but was one of over sixty photographs taken of her that day. Warhol’s factory diary video records the progress of the photo shoot, which included several changes of clothes and various poses. Among the many people who dropped in and out of the studio during the photo session was another of Warhol’s friends, John Lennon, whom Minnelli met for the first time that day.
Julie Robinson, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs
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WALL LABEL: Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography, 2016
The actress and singer, Liza Minnelli, became an important member of Warhol’s inner circle in the late 1970s and 1980s. Minnelli, Bianca Jagger, fashion designer Halston and Warhol regularly visited the New York nightclub, Studio 54, together.
This Polaroid was taken in Warhol’s studio and, although it appears deceptively informal, Warhol had carefully directed the outcome. In his quest for beautiful images, he would ask his female subjects to remove most or all of their jewellery, and white make-up was applied to their necks, faces and shoulders to compensate for the effects of the flash. The artist would then refashion the sitter’s clothes and direct them to hold their head in various positions while he took sixty or so Polaroids.
Warhol loved the fact that the Polaroid camera ’dissolves the wrinkles and imperfections’ – the high contrast flattened the faces and made them ideal as a basis for his screen-printed paintings.
Julie Robinson, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs
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Andy Warhol and Photography: A Social Media
Art Gallery of South Australia, 3 March 2023 – 14 May 2023 -
Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography
Art Gallery of South Australia, 5 February 2016 – 18 September 2016
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[Book] AGSA 500.