Neal Baer Collection

Andy Warhol (b. 1928, Pittsburgh, PA – d. 1989, New York, NY) is one of the most significant American postwar artists. “[T]he influence of his work—in its merging of pop culture and fine art, its exploitation of the serial logic of the print, and his own canny media manipulation and self-fashioning—continues to reverberate.” Warhol’s Sex Parts series of paintings and prints (1977-78), of which this work is part, stands out from his practice as blatantly sexual, and therefore has been considered “a tool for Warhol’s ultimate acceptance of his sexuality.”

The seed of the Torsos and Sex Parts series sprouted after a man approached Warhol boasting of his large penis. Warhol agreed to photograph the man’s genitalia and the photographs were placed in a box casually labeled “Sex Parts.” Later, Warhol noticed the wording of the box’s label and conceived the idea for a series of works based on the initial photographs. Subjects for subsequent photo shoots were recruited from gay bath houses by Halston’s boyfriend, the artist and window dresser Victor Hugo. The men were asked to relax, pose, or take part in various sexual activities while Warhol photographed them with a 35mm camera and a Polaroid Big Shot. According to associate Bob Colacello, when confronted on the explicit nature of the photographs sitting around the office Warhol responded, “Just tell them it’s art, Bob. They’re landscapes.” (Colacello, Holy Terror, p. 337)

The tamer images became the basis of the Torsos series, which was meant to be exhibited in museums, and which debuted at the Grand Palais in Paris in October 1977. The more sexually-charged artworks were produced as the Sex Parts print portfolio and were intended to be purchased for private collections. 

– Andy Warhol Foundation, “Dirty Art: Andy Warhol’s Torso and Sex Parts”

The series can also be seen to enact Warhol’s stated (and performed) asexuality (as Bob Colacello wrote “a mixture of voyeurism and masturbation—to use [Warhol’s] word abstract“) as well as suggest Warhol’s real, devotional, and ardent sexual nature. Works from Sex Parts were never exhibited in Warhol’s lifetime and labeled as “landscapes” in his diaries. The Sex Parts series form an interesting dialogue with the “abstract” Oxidation series (also known as the “Piss Paintings”) made nearly concurrently. Sex Parts were not the first time Warhol made sexually explicit art as he produced erotic drawings in the 1950s, which were also only exhibited posthumously.

Provenance

Lot 241, Modern & Contemporary Prints & Multiples, Bonhams New York, 23 May 2024

See also

Andy Warhol in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art

Andy Warhol in the collection of the MoMA

Andy Warhol in the collection of the Broad Foundation

Exhibition poster for Torsos at the Grand Palais, Paris, 1977 at the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate

Work from Torsos in the collection of the Museum Brandhorst, Munich

“Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again,” the Whitney Museum of American Art, November 12, 2018 – March 31, 2019

Phaidon blog post, The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonée of the Paintings: 1976-1978 (Volume 5)

“Andy Warhol: Piss & Sex Paintings and Drawings,” Gagosian New York, September 19 – November 2, 2002

“Andy Warhol: Oxidation Paintings,” Skarstedt New York, May 1 – June 28, 2025