Sixty Last Suppers (1986)
by Andy Warhol
Acrylic paint and screenprint on canvas
Faith, death and desire come together in Warhol’s Sixty Last Suppers. This large-scale work forms part of a series commissioned in 1986 based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. This famous mural depicts Jesus the night before his crucifixion with the twelve disciples. A copy of the mural had hung in the Warhola family kitchen.
Da Vinci’s depiction has been damaged and repaired many times over the centuries. Warhol purposely used a cheap reproduction based on a 19th-century copy for his work. Choosing to copy a copy of the original, Warhol evokes the re-enactment of the Last Supper that takes place during every Mass. It also plays on the authenticity of da Vinci’s Last Supper, with Warhol stating: ‘It’s a good picture... It’s something you see all the time. You don’t think about it.’
Unlike most of his paintings, Warhol’s Last Supper series focuses on a group scene. The repetition of an image showing collective activity between men adds to the work’s symbolism. It was created soon after the death of Warhol’s former partner Jon Gould from an AIDS-related illness, and at a time when the private lives of gay men were facing the glare of the media. While Warhol was not a queer activist, Sixty Last Suppers could be seen as a moving portrayal of endless loss, reminiscent of ‘columbarium’, the wall graves found in many cemeteries.
Sixty Last Suppers would turn out to be one of Warhol’s final works. After the first exhibition of the series in Milan, he returned to New York where he reluctantly checked in to hospital for gallbladder surgery. While the operation was a success, his long-term ill health led to his heart failing, and Warhol died on 22 February 1987, aged 58.
[Tate Modern]
Andy Warhol
(March – November 2020)
A new look at the extraordinary life and work of the pop art superstar
Andy Warhol was the son of immigrants who became an American icon. A shy gay man who became the hub of New York’s social scene. An artist who embraced consumerism, celebrity and the counter culture – and changed modern art in the process.
He was born in 1928 as Andrew Warhola to working-class parents from present day Slovakia. In 1949 he moved from Pittsburgh to New York. Initially working as a commercial illustrator, his skill at transforming the imagery of American culture soon found its realisation in his ground-breaking pop art.
This major retrospective is the first Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern for almost 20 years. As well as his iconic pop images of Marilyn Monroe, Coca-Cola and Campbell’s soup cans, it includes works never seen before in the UK. Twenty-five works from his Ladies and Gentlemen series – portraits of black and Latinx drag queens and trans women – are shown for the first time in 30 years.
Popularly radical and radically popular, Warhol was an artist who reimagined what art could be in an age of immense social, political and technological change.
[Tate Modern]
Sixty Last Suppers (1986)
by Andy Warhol
Acrylic paint and screenprint on canvas
Faith, death and desire come together in Warhol’s Sixty Last Suppers. This large-scale work forms part of a series commissioned in 1986 based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. This famous mural depicts Jesus the night before his crucifixion with the twelve disciples. A copy of the mural had hung in the Warhola family kitchen.
Da Vinci’s depiction has been damaged and repaired many times over the centuries. Warhol purposely used a cheap reproduction based on a 19th-century copy for his work. Choosing to copy a copy of the original, Warhol evokes the re-enactment of the Last Supper that takes place during every Mass. It also plays on the authenticity of da Vinci’s Last Supper, with Warhol stating: ‘It’s a good picture... It’s something you see all the time. You don’t think about it.’
Unlike most of his paintings, Warhol’s Last Supper series focuses on a group scene. The repetition of an image showing collective activity between men adds to the work’s symbolism. It was created soon after the death of Warhol’s former partner Jon Gould from an AIDS-related illness, and at a time when the private lives of gay men were facing the glare of the media. While Warhol was not a queer activist, Sixty Last Suppers could be seen as a moving portrayal of endless loss, reminiscent of ‘columbarium’, the wall graves found in many cemeteries.
Sixty Last Suppers would turn out to be one of Warhol’s final works. After the first exhibition of the series in Milan, he returned to New York where he reluctantly checked in to hospital for gallbladder surgery. While the operation was a success, his long-term ill health led to his heart failing, and Warhol died on 22 February 1987, aged 58.
[Tate Modern]
Andy Warhol
(March – November 2020)
A new look at the extraordinary life and work of the pop art superstar
Andy Warhol was the son of immigrants who became an American icon. A shy gay man who became the hub of New York’s social scene. An artist who embraced consumerism, celebrity and the counter culture – and changed modern art in the process.
He was born in 1928 as Andrew Warhola to working-class parents from present day Slovakia. In 1949 he moved from Pittsburgh to New York. Initially working as a commercial illustrator, his skill at transforming the imagery of American culture soon found its realisation in his ground-breaking pop art.
This major retrospective is the first Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern for almost 20 years. As well as his iconic pop images of Marilyn Monroe, Coca-Cola and Campbell’s soup cans, it includes works never seen before in the UK. Twenty-five works from his Ladies and Gentlemen series – portraits of black and Latinx drag queens and trans women – are shown for the first time in 30 years.
Popularly radical and radically popular, Warhol was an artist who reimagined what art could be in an age of immense social, political and technological change.
[Tate Modern]