Andy Warhol. Love, Sex, and Desire. Drawings 1950–1962

Well before Andy Warhol’s rise to the pinnacle of Pop Art, he created and exhibited seductive drawings celebrating male beauty. Andy Warhol Love, Sex, & Desire: Drawings 1950-1962 features over three hundred drawings rendered primarily in ink on paper portraying young men, many of them nude, some sexually charged, and occasionally adorned with whimsical black hearts and delightful embellishments. They lounge or preen, proud of or even bored by their beauty, while the artist sketches them, rapt. They rarely engage with their keen observer, and likewise Warhol’s focus is on their form, their erotic qualities, and unbridled sexuality. If his subjects are content to revel in their attractiveness, so too is Warhol. His confident hand illustrates a multitude of colorful characters, yet also reveals much about this enigmatic artist. Warhol was already a booming commercial illustrator when he exhibited studies from this body of work at the Bodley Gallery on New York’s Upper East Side in 1956.