56 Henry is pleased to present Nudes, a collection of twenty-two Polaroids and two pencil drawings by Andy Warhol, on view at 56 Henry Street through February 23, 2025.
The Polaroids are from a series that began in 1976, Sex Parts, and developed alongside another series of Polaroids entitled Torsos. In Torsos, Warhol captured the upper bodies of men in a manner reminiscent of classical nudes. Sex Parts sees the camera panning downward, focusing on the parts of the body typically omitted from art historical canon. The battery of nudity in the show strips each individual work of its shock value. Instead, each image becomes a study of shape, form, and light. Inspect one photograph for a while and expect to find more in the contours of the body and the interplay between light and shadow than in the eroticism of the work.
Shot on a Big Shot Polaroid, Warhol’s camera of choice from 1971 until his death, the photographs document a seminal change in modern art making. Recruiting models from gay clubs and bathhouses, Warhol blurs the line between art and the erotic while also openly asserting his own homosexuality.
The two methods of artmaking in Nudes present a juxtaposition of the instantaneous and the time intensive. The photographs reflect a single moment in time, while the drawings re-live that moment over and over in their creation Warhol’s authorship is highly visible in these drawings, almost more present than the subject they depict; they conjure the unexpected image of Andy Warhol meticulously drawing by hand.
This exhibition is presented in collaboration with and thanks to Cromwell Art LLC.
