Artist Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987)
Title Watermelon
Series Space Fruit: Still Lifes
Date 1979
Medium Color silkscreen on paperpaper
Dimensions Image: 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Sheet: 30 x 40 in. (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Credit Line Extra, out of the edition. Designated for research and educational purposes only.
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 2013.151
About this Work
Pop artist Andy Warhol is best known for his colorful images of packaged foodstuff –Campbell’s soup. Warhol was fascinated by mass media and advertising, making food an ideal subject. The son of poor immigrants, he was surprisingly frugal and low-brow in his dietary habits (he claimed to have eaten Campbell’s soup every day for twenty years.) Warhol included other food items in his work, from Coca-Cola and tuna fish to ice cream cones and bananas. He even recorded the artist Robert Indiana eating a mushroom for his film Eat (1964).
In 1979 Warhol began a series of still lifes, using fruits as their primary theme. Based on photographs by Ronnie Cutrone, they included Space Fruit: a set of six prints featuring different fruit with elongated shadows. While the title suggests the science fiction mania that hit the country after the release of Star Wars (1977), it is more likely a reference to their spatial configuration. Warhol said, “When I look at things, I always see the space they occupy. I always want the space to reappear, to make a comeback, because it is lost space when there is something in it.”
