13 Most Apr 27

Wanted Men 2014

Andy Warhol Sept 7
and the 1964 2014
World’s Fair
13 Most More than fifty years have passed since architect Philip Johnson was
asked by New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller to design the

Wanted Men New York State Pavilion for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. To adorn
the outside wall of the Pavilion’s circular Theaterama, Johnson invited

Andy Warhol
ten up-and-coming artists to each produce a new work for a 20’ x 20’
slot: Peter Agostini, John Chamberlain, Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly,
Roy Lichtenstein, Alexander Lieberman, Robert Mallary, Robert
and the 1964 Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol, who at that time
had enjoyed only one New York exhibition of his Pop paintings.
World’s Fair While Lichtenstein contributed a laughing comic-book redhead and
Kelly paired red and blue monochromatic forms, Warhol chose to
Apr 27 enlarge mug shots of the NYPD’s 13 most wanted criminals of 1962,
silkscreen them on square Masonite panels, and tile them together into
2014 an animated black-and-white rogue’s gallery that would look out over
the Fair. 13 Most Wanted Men was installed by April 15, 1964, and,
Sept 7 after triggering objections at the highest level, was painted over with
silver paint a few days later. When the Fair opened to the public on
2014 April 22, all that was visible was a 20’ x 20’ silver square, mounted on
the concrete structure between a fragile-looking white sculpture by
Agostini and a colorful combination of advertising imagery by
Rosenquist.

Cover: Andy Warhol, 13 Most Wanted

Men, silkscreen on masonite, 20 x 20 ft.
Installed on the exterior of the New
York State Pavilion.
© 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York

Billy Name, Warhol on his desk, 1964,

reprint 2014, archival pigment print.
Courtesy the artist.

#13MostWanted
That July, Warhol revisited the project and reused the silkscreens for the
mural to make a set of paintings each featuring one of the mugshots.
Abandoning the square format of the Fair tiles, Warhol restored a portrait
format by using 48” x 40” canvases. He also returned to the source material
for the first names and “numbers” of the criminals themselves to title these
new, individual works. These paintings—Most Wanted Man #1, John M.;
Most Wanted Man #2, John Victor G.; Most Wanted Man #3, Ellis Ruez B.;
Most Wanted Man #4, Redmond C.; Most Wanted Man #6, Thomas Francis
C.; Most Wanted Man #7, Salvatore V.; Most Wanted Man #10, Louis
Joseph M.; Most Wanted Man #11, John Joseph H.; and Most Wanted Man
#12, Frank B—have been brought together from collections in the US and
Germany to form the core of 13 Most Wanted Men: Andy Warhol and the
1964 World’s Fair.

Before moving on to other work, Warhol produced a replacement for

the Men which was never accepted and is now lost: 25 identical Masonite
panels each depicting the smiling face of World’s Fair President and
New York City planning mastermind Robert Moses. Although there is
no evidence that Moses had anything to do with the commission or
the covering-over of the mural, the fact that Warhol identified him as
censor in this way indicates how large Moses loomed in the collective
imagination of the time.

The Fair was open from April to October of both 1964 and 1965, and the Andy Warhol, Most Wanted Man No. 11,
John Joseph H., Jr., 1964. Acrylic and
square silvery blank that had been 13 Most Wanted Men stayed up for liquitexin silkscreen on canvas. Image
both of those seasons. In a New York World-Telegram article from July 6, courtesy Museum für Moderne Kunst
1965 titled “Silver Square ‘So Nothing’ It Satisfies Warhol,” the artist, Frankfurt am Main. Photographer: Axel
standing before the mural at the World’s Fair with members of his Schneider, Frankfurt am Main
entourage, is quoted as saying that the silvered-over version is “more © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights
me now.” Through typical Warholian attitudinal alchemy, the Men had Society (ARS), New York
become a new work in the form of a silver monochrome.

There is no easy answer to why Warhol chose to make 13 Most Wanted

Men. There is also no satisfactory answer to the question of why it was
ordered covered over. Years after the incident itself, Philip Johnson
explained that Rockefeller, vulnerable because of his faltering bid for
the Republican nomination for President, said the work must go because
seven out of the thirteen men had Italian names and he was unwilling to
alienate this constituency. But as a socially liberal legislator and major
collector of the visual art of his time, perhaps Rockefeller was not able
to express a position as straightforwardly as some Long Island and
Queens residents interviewed for a New York Journal-American article on
April 15, 1964: “Frankly, I consider it out of place at the Fair;” “The Fair is
a place for beauty, progress, and enjoyment;” and “Thugs at the Fair?
Nobody wants to see their distasteful pictures. Why not concentrate on
beauty instead of criminals and crime?” One did express a liking
The New York State Pavilion’s Theaterama for the idea and suggested that Rockefeller himself should be featured
with Peter Agostini and silvered-over amongst the criminals.
Andy Warhol, 1964. Courtesy Bill Cotter
of worldsfairphotos.com
© 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for
the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York
With its punning reference to “wanted men,” the active glances going on
amongst those men in their mural configuration, and what could be seen
as a reference to “rough trade,” the homoerotic subtext of 13 Most
Wanted Men has been well noted by art historians. Many other works
by Warhol could also be seen as coded references to, or joking puns on,
gay desire, including Empire, his eight-hour film of the Empire State
Building—as much a phallic image as it is an unblinking portrait of the
iconic structure Warhol called “a star.” (Empire could also be considered
a “World’s Fair” artwork — its subject’s lights were installed on the
occasion of the global expo.)

In January 1964, Warhol began the Screen Tests, three-minute-long 16

mm filmed portraits. The very first of these—which could be said to be
the inspiration for all of the Tests, which eventually numbered 472—
were titled 13 Most Beautiful Boys. This conceptual series, which
continued into 1966 but was concentrated in 1964, eventually comprised
42 portraits of young men—from downtown personality Taylor Mead
to dancer Freddie Herko to poet and artist John Giorno to Factory
photographer Billy Name to actor Dennis Hopper to someone noted only
as “Boy.” In a later interview, Name says that the work was the title— Show, Vol. 4, no. 10 (November 1964), The
an endlessly fungible, manipulable group that could always be added to, Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Gift of
like any other collection. The Boys and Men share more than the first Kyle Wright. Pictured: Baby Jane Holzer in
part of their title. In the Tests’ very process, in which a subject, under World’s Fair souvenir sunglasses
bright lights, was requested to stay as still as possible for three
excruciating minutes, we also find a hint of the punishing constraints of
the police department mug shot.

In POPism, his 1980 autobiography, Warhol says of the 13 Most Wanted

Men: “In one way I was glad the mural was gone: now I wouldn’t have to
feel responsible if one of the criminals ever got turned in to the FBI
because someone had recognized him from my pictures.” Here, he is
identifying himself with the Men—frankly hoping for their continued
freedom. The well-documented crackdown on gay bars as well as cinemas
and theaters suspected of showing pornography was intensifying in Spring
1964 and involved Warhol and his circle directly in police action and
lawsuits. Film-cultural giant and long-time Warhol supporter Jonas Mekas
was at the center of what was understood as a World’s Fair-related
clean-up of bohemia. His screening of Flaming Creatures, a work by
underground filmmaker Jack Smith, was raided and all films featured that
night confiscated as evidence, leading to the loss of what may have been
Warhol’s first film, which had been on the program that night. (This was
a 3-minute reel documenting the making of Jack Smith’s second film,
Normal Love.) Although the conception of the 13 Most Wanted predates
this specific activity, the mainstream attitude towards Warhol’s core social
scene was that of repression and condemnation, crystallized perhaps in
a several-thousand-word article published in the New York Times in
December 1963 with the headline “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in
City Provokes Wide Concern.”
 The Thirteen Most Wanted, Police
Department, City of New York, 1962
(source material for Andy Warhol’s “Most
Wanted Men” series) p. 9. The Andy
Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding
Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
© 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for
the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York

13 Most Wanted Men: Andy Warhol and the 1964 World’s Fair takes
Warhol’s mural as its single subject, addressing its creation and
destruction and placing it in its artistic and social context by combining
art, documentation, and archival material. Parallel to the striking,
somber mugshot canvases, materials in the exhibition are organized
so the viewer can begin to appreciate the intersection and overlap of
underground and establishment; the lives and careers of the major
players; of painting, sculpture, and film in a key year for Warhol; and of
art, protest, and gay life at the time.
Queens Museum
New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens, NY 11368
T 718 592 9700
F 718 592 5778
E [email protected]
queensmuseum.org
@QueensMuseum

13 Most Wanted Men: Andy Warhol

and the 1964 World’s Fair is organized
by Larissa Harris, Curator, Queens
Museum, and Nicholas Chambers,
Milton Fine Curator of Art, The Andy
Warhol Museum, with Anastasia Rygle,
assistant curator for the project, and
Timothy Mennel, curatorial advisor.
13 Most Wanted Men: Andy Warhol
and the 1964 World’s Fair is presented
in collaboration with The Andy Warhol
Museum in Pittsburgh, PA., where the
exhibition will be on view September
27, 2014 – January 5, 2015.
This exhibition is supported by The
Henry Luce Foundation, National
Endowment for the Arts and Delta Air
Lines. Additional support comes from
the New York City Department of
Cultural Affairs and New York State
Council on the Arts with the support
of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the
New York State Legislature.

In Collaboration with