Andy Warhol Posters 'n' Pop

The Portrayal of Mick Jagger by Andy Warhol

In 1963, the Rolling Stones were invited to play at a birthday party at the New York Academy of Music for Baby Jane Holzer, who was a young and talented model for Andy Warhol at the time. At this particular event, Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol met for the first time. The two immediately bonded, and would go on to collaborate on many future artistic projects together.

The Jagger Logo
In 1972, when the Rolling Stones formed their own record company, Jagger admired the creative works of Warhol to such an extent, that he hired him to create their band’s logo. The unique artistic abilities of Warhol produced the now famous exaggerated Mick Jagger mouth and lips logo that has graced many of the Rolling Stones’ albums, as well as their promotional merchandise.

The 10 Portraits of Mick Jagger
Jagger, being greatly impressed with the results of Warhol’s logo, requested numerous portraits of himself in 1975. Warhol chose 10 different photographs of Jagger, amongst the many that he had taken himself. Using these photographs as a reference, he added color to them in his own unique style, and captured the essence of his friend Mick, the musician and celebrity.

For all 10 of these abstract portraits, Warhol utilized an assortment of color blocks and hand-made lines that would ultimately bring viewers closer to Jagger, allowing them a glimpse of his exciting celebrity lifestyle and personal life.

Instead of using paint for coloring, as he did for some of his other celebrity portraits, Warhol cut out paper shapes of different colors and placed them on a blank canvas. For example, in some of the portraits, Warhol emphasized Mick Jagger’s famous mouth by adhering a red circle on the canvas, which would later become the site for the lips. When all the color blocks had been added to the canvas, the artist set the silkscreen photograph on top of it to complete the image.

Although silkscreen images allow for a number of artwork copies to be printed, some of the Mick Jagger portraits are very rare, and most are not in very good condition. One particular portrait in the Jagger collection numbers less than 250 copies worldwide, and to find one in reasonably good shape would be an amazing triumph.

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