Adman

Ad execs and creatives were seen as glamorous figures conjuring consumer fantasies and indulging in three-martini lunches. (We know them from movies – like 'The hucksters’ and 'The man in the gray flannel suit’ – and TV – from 'Bewitched’ to 'Mad men’.)

But it was also an industry that was little understood and sometimes viewed suspiciously, one that – according to Vance Packard in his bestselling 1957 book 'The hidden persuaders’ – used deceitful techniques like subliminal advertising to manipulate consumers.

Its approaches were evolving rapidly. Market research had become crucial; agencies adopted a ‘creative team’ approach; and the concept of the unique selling proposition (USP) – the thing that determined that no two products were alike – was developed.

Linked to the USP was brand identity, the ‘personality’ of the brand, that ineffable something that was more than the product itself – an idea that Andy Warhol understood well.

Warhol took a strategically contrarian approach in his commercial work that emphasised wit and creativity over technical ability. In doing so he established his own identifiable ‘brand’ – a whimsical illustration style that appealed to clients who favoured the ‘artistic’ values that it represented. Notably, his work privileged drawing at a time when photography was on the rise.

Andy Warhol’s first commission in New York, in 1949, was to illustrate a series of articles titled ‘Success is…’ for ‘Glamour’. The magazine’s art director, Tina Fredericks, recalled in a 1978 interview:

‘I asked him if he could draw something that would be useful to the magazine, and he said he could draw anything… We needed some shoes drawn at the time, and I asked Gerry Stutz [head of retail for I Miller Shoes] to give me some shoes, and I gave them to Andy to take home, and he took them and came back the next morning – very speedy which I always like. They were marvelous drawings, but they were all wrinkled and full of character, and I explained that our shoes had to be much crisper, and “virginal-er” [chuckles] and look as if somebody wanted to buy them, and wear them themselves… So, he went away again, and came back the next day, and they were wonderful, I mean perfect. And it was absolutely true that he could draw anything, and very, very quickly. And, so, we used him a lot.’

- quoted in Patrick S Smith, ’Warhol: conversations about the artist’, UMI Research Press, 1988

‘All department stores will become museums, and all museums will become department stores’ – Andy Warhol

In the 1950s, designing shop windows was considered effete, a career suitable only for homosexual men and potentially damaging to the career of any serious artist.

So not everybody was happy to admit to the work. But Warhol was proud of his commercial work and relished the opportunity for self-promotion and creative expression. He unashamedly signed his window displays, but was also dismissed as a ‘window-decorator type’ by author Truman Capote.

As well as window displays for Tiffany & Co, Fleming-Joffe and others, Andy Warhol designed several windows for women’s clothing store Bonwit Teller, one of New York’s most prominent retailers. Perhaps the most famous of these are the perfume promotions for Arpège and Dior (with their coded gay messages and camp flourishes) and his first proto-pop installation in 1961 (which included paintings of Superman and Popeye, newspaper cuttings and plastic surgery advertisements), marking a transition from adman to cool pop artist – in a space designed for the sale of commodities.

During the 1950s Andy Warhol was renowned for his illustrations of shoes.

They feature in his first commercial assignment, in 1949, for ‘Glamour’ magazine, and in his first illustration for ‘Harper’s Bazaar’ in 1951.

His large-format advertisements for shoe manufacturer and retailer I Miller & Sons ran in the New York Times almost every Sunday from early 1955 to late 1959 (in total, he produced over 300 drawings in a campaign lauded by the New York advertising industry).

And shoes appeared in his art.

It was a drawing of a shoe that was the first Warhol work shown in a public museum, in 1956, in a group show titled ‘Recent Drawings USA’ at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

In December of that year Warhol put on his own exhibition ‘The Golden Slipper Show or Shoes Shoe in America’ at New York’s Bodley Gallery: a series of 40 gilded shoe collages symbolising well-known celebrities including Julie Andrews, James Dean and Elvis Presley. The shoe he created to represent his idol Truman Capote was bought for Capote by one of his friends, who described Warhol as ‘becoming very well known. Very on-coming.’

Andy Warhol arrived in New York only months after Columbia Records unveiled the first long-playing vinyl record at a press conference there.

This new consumer product soon become hip and collectable, not only for the music but for the covers – coveted, analysed and put on display. Large and square, the ‘LP’ was a great format for designers, and cover design assignments were highly desirable.

Warhol was, as usual, ahead of the pack. His first cover – among his earliest paid commissions – was for Columbia: ‘A program for Mexican music’ in 1949.

In the 1950s he was prolific as a cover artist, illustrating a vast number of jazz and classical titles for companies like RCA Victor, Prestige and Blue Note.

Later he was responsible for perhaps the most celebrated record cover of all time, the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sticky fingers’, with its infamous close-up photograph of a bulging jean-clad crotch, complete with a working, zippered fly.

By 1987, Warhol had designed around 60 LP album covers – and many more singles – for artists from George Gershwin to John Lennon and Diana Ross.