Andy Warhol | Skulls
Skulls
1976
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen
Ten parts, each panel: 15 x 19 inches (38.1 x 48.3)
Overall installation: 75 3/4 x 38 inches (192.4 x 96.5 cm)
© 2018 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein
Andy Warhol’s iconic ten-part silkscreen Skulls (1976) offers a vivid memento mori, its bold palette at odds with its morbid content. The work expresses Warhol’s notion of death as the blank afterimage of life, rather than as a melancholy fate. The artist’s assistant Ronnie Cutrone once commented that to paint a skull is “to paint the portrait of everybody in the world.”