Andy Warhol
Chocolate Balls à la Chambord, from Wild Raspberries
1959
Offset lithograph with hand-coloring on laid paper, from the unknown edition size, with full margins, framed.
Sheet: 17 1/8 x 10 7/8in (43.5 x 27.6 cm)
Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987) was one of the most important American postwar artists, producing a prolific body of work in print, drawing, painting, sculpture, and film. Born and raised in Pittsburg, Warhol worked as a commercial illustrator in the 1950s and also started exhibited his own work, such as his early book project “In the Bottom of My Garden” at Serendipity, an ice cream parlor on the Upper East Side in New York.
Suzie Frankfurt became friends with Warhol after seeing his work at Serendipity and they decided to collaborate on a recipe book project that parodied mass-produced French cookbooks fashionable at the time. Their “recipes”, which often instructed the purchase of store-bought or absurd delicacies, were invented by Frankfurt, illustrated by Warhol and calligraphed by Warhol’s mother. They hired four boys who were Warhol’s neighbors to hand-color each illustration in the original 34 editions in slightly different ways. Titled “Wild Raspberries” in a cheeky homage to Ingmar Bergman somber film “Wild Strawberries” (1957), the recipe book was not the wild success Frankfurt and Warhol had hoped it to be. However, the project’s engagement with popular culture, the assembly-line production method, and the playful, deadpan tone presage all of Warhol’s later work.
“Chocolate Balls à la Chambord” is one of 23 hand-colored recipes from “Wild Raspberries” and this recipe reads:
Decorate a ten inch round silver Platter with Maraschino cherries, fresh mint and almond filberts, then call up the Royal Pastry shop and have them Deliver a Pound of half inch chocolate balls, Serve only with no-Cal Ginger ale, To be Served to very thin People.
Provenance
Lot 246, Bonhams New York, May 23, 2024
See also
Andy Warhol in the collection of the MoMA, New York
Andy Warhol in the Whitney Museum of Art, New York
Alison Flood, “Rare Andy Warhol cookbook Wild Raspberries goes to auction,” March 8, 2021
William Norwich, “Warhol’s Cookbook Co-Author Tells All”, The Observer, December 1, 1997
Warhol Foundation, ‘Warhol By the Book,” October 10, 2015 – January 10, 2016