Hilton | Asmus Contemporary is proud to announce the addition of a new photo exhibit, Andy Warhol’s House. The exhibit will feature David Gamble’s famous photos of Warhol’s house in New York City after death that provide an impossibly intimate look at the private life of the famed artist and include photos of his medicine cabinet, kitchen and living room, all untouched following his death. The exhibit opens at Hilton | Asmus Contemporary (716 N. Wells St., Chicago, IL 60654) on October 10.
Warhol was a private man who rarely allowed anyone into his red brick townhouse in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. After Warhol’s death, his manager, Fred Hughes, was charged with running the Warhol Foundation, newly established to carryout Warhol’s will. To kick start the foundation, there would be an auction of Warhol’s property and personal collections, but Hughes needed a way to generate interest in the auction. Warhol was wildly popular, but hardly anyone had ever seen the inside of his home. This was the first celebrity auction in America.
Enter David Gamble, internationally renowned artist / photographer. Gamble was given never-before-seen access to Warhol’s home, an exclusive opportunity to photograph the contents of the house as they lay before the items were sent to auction at Sotheby’s. Gamble’s astonishingly personal photographs were featured on the cover and in a 10-page spread in of Observer Magazine in London. Hughes plan worked, as the photos generated the immense world-wide interest that he sought. The 1988 auction raised $25 million for Warhol’s foundation.
Gamble said that from the start his goal was to “put Andy back in the house,” to make the photographs look so realistic that a viewer could imagine that the artist was just in the other room grabbing a snack. In 1997, he used silkscreen technology to physically screen pop art versions of Warhol into some of his photos, some of which are featured in this exhibit.
While originally taken to increase interest in an already hyped auction, Gamble’s photographs have since become valuable in their own right, with two selling at Sotheby’s NYC earlier this year. These images are also used as historical evidence that the objects in the house belonged to Warhol and to show visual proof of how he lived at the time. The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has also acquired a large print of Gamble’s Andy Warhol’s Medicine Cabinet, a particularly culturally important photograph as it’s the first of what became an entire genre of photographs of artists’ medicine cabinets.
The exhibit at Hilton | Asmus Contemporary includes the following photographs from Gamble:
Andy Warhol’s Kitchen,
East 66 Street NYC 1987
Andy Warhol’s Living Room,
East 66 Street NYC 1987
Andy Warhol’s Parlour,
East 66th Street NYC, 1987
Andy Warhol’s Medicine Cabinet
(En suite)
East 66th Street NYC 1987
Andy Warhol’s Wig, Glasses & Watch
East 66th Street NYC 1987
Fred Hughes in Andy Warhol’s Factory with Liz Taylor Painting
860 Broadway NYC 1987
Andy Warhol’s Wig Glasses and Watch “Silkscreen” Marilyn Color Series
East 66th St NYC, 1987
Silkscreen series London, 1997
Andy Warhol’s Coke Bottle and VHS Movies, In Bedroom
East 66th St NYC, 1987
Andy Warhol’s Teddy Bear and Cowboy Boots,
East 66th Street, NYC 1987
Andy Warhol’s Wig and Glasses “Silkscreen” Marilyn Color Series
Complete Set (4) Limited Edition
Andy Warhol’s Wig and Glasses
Complete Set (4) Limited Edition
East 66th St NYC 1987
About Hilton | Asmus Contemporary
Hilton | Asmus Contemporary is owned and run by multi-media artist, poet and writer Arica Hilton. With more than 30 years of experience in representing artists around the world, Hilton founded Hilton | Asmus Contemporary in 2012. In recent years the gallery has flourished, seeing tremendous growth and recognition for the caliber of art exhibitions Hilton has brought to Chicago.
Located in Chicago's River North Art District, the gallery specializes in modern and contemporary paintings, works on paper and sculpture, with a special focus on photography featuring internationally known artists from the United States, Northern Europe and the Mediterranean region. Whether it is the history of the film industry that has changed the way we see our world, or artists making history by using film, moving or still, Hilton | Asmus Contemporary seeks to initiate a dialogue, to bring awareness to the contemporary issues of our times.
Hilton | Asmus Contemporary has received acclaim for exhibitions of the photographers Julian Wasser, David Yarrow, Peter Sorel, Terry O’Neill, Douglas Kirkland and Hugh Arnold.