| This dissertation is about Andy Warhol and abstraction. It examines the origins of Warhol's relationship with abstract art in the 1940s and 1950s, his uses and misuses of abstractionist picture making strategies in the 1960s, and the cultural contexts that influenced his first two major series of abstract paintings---the Oxidation paintings and the Shadows---in the late--1970s. The current study represents an attempt not just to provide a more complex understanding of Warhol's engagement with abstract art, but also to reconsider his late abstract paintings according to the more immediate contextual forces that shaped the conditions of their production and reception. The Oxidation paintings and the Shadows designate a culmination of certain, otherwise obscured trajectories in Warhol's work as much as they provide an introduction to the themes and methods that would dominate his painting practice during his final decade. By tracing these trajectories from their source, this study aims to participate in the mode of perception that it hopes to describe. Its goal is to provide a glimpse into the shadow history of Warhol's art. |
