Ice Cream Dessert
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? The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London 2009

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Ice Cream Dessert 1959
  • Artist Rooms
For Warhol food was his ?great extravagance? and he had a very sweet tooth, claiming that ?all I ever really want is sugar?. This image of an elaborate ice-cream has been depicted in the same way he would complete a fashion illustration - with his blotted-line technique and vivid colours. The ice-cream was almost certainly from the fashionable Serendipity 3 cafe where Warhol would host colouring parties in the 1950s. He would encourage his friends ? some of whom would have helped him create the original illustrations - to colour the works with an inventiveness that adds to their whimsical nature. This process looks forward to the production methods of Warhol?s legendary studio, the Factory, in the 1960s.

Glossary Open

Blotted-Line Technique

Andy Warhol first experimented with this form of print-making whilst a student and it would later characterise his commercial work of the 1950s. With two sheets of paper hinged together, a pencil drawing is made on one sheet which is subsequently traced over with ink. Whilst the ink is still wet the sheets of paper are pressed together, thus transferring the line. The result is a broken, yet apparently intuitive, line drawing.

Blotted-Line Technique

Details

  • Acc. No. AR00255
  • Medium Ink and dye on paper
  • Size 73.70 x 35.60 cm
  • Credit ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Acquired jointly through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

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