Acrylic, silk screen ink and diamond dust on linen.
- Photograph: This is a film negative taken in black and white
- The blacks are separated from the whites by contrast
- The photo was most likely enlarged drastically for this large canvas
- Warhol simplified the image to a very simple, contrastive gradation
- Under layer of off-white
- Black background color
- First took the white shades from the photograph and, using only the basic form of each shoe, chose 14 colors:
o Orange
o Tan
o Sea foam green
o Burnt umber
o Mustard yellow
o Bubble gum pink
o Dark robins egg blue
o Lavender
o Lighter shade of the first dark brown
o Slate gray
o Sage green
o Bold blue
o Pastel green
- Each of the shoes appears to have been screened separately creating texture and separating each shoe.
- Also makes the process more complex and time consuming. Actually harder than the mass production that he normally portrays.
- The process of using separate screens for each shoe is apparent especially where some of the shoes over lap
- The green, blue, and lavender shoes in the bottom left corner demonstrates this:
- The heel of the blue shoe overlaps the lavender shoe showing the layers of paint.
- If the shoes were not separately screened, they could have been filled in by hand after the initial screen, but this wouldn’t follow Warhol’s normal process.
- On the lower left hand corner, the green shoe has a strip where the green paint didn’t come through. Underneath the green, there is an off white, cream color.
- Rough form not really focused on detail at all but there are shaded areas, which become filled in with the background color based on the shading of the photograph.
- The next screen fills in the details of the shading on the shoes
- The final layer, and I don’t really understand how this works, is the diamond dust layer.
- Because this layer is not opaque paint like the other layers, but a “dusting” of glitter, which, apparently, is made of diamonds, this works well in the gradation of the photo, slowly fading out like a shadow really does.
- Some of these shadows are screened on in a thick and dark layer of the diamond dust. This is why the diamond dust appears to be the last layer.
- The label inside the shoe proves that the process Warhol used was not an inverted negative because the words would be backwards.
- Imperfections in the color > drips, areas that weren’t filled in, ect. Alert the viewer to the industrial / mass produced aspect.
- This piece is better viewed from far away because the intent is to view it as a whole and Warhol was not specifically detailed oriented.
As I was doing this assignment, an older british man and his wife walked up. The man proclaimed that he had cracked the mystery of the diamond dust. Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the floor, staring intently at this piece trying to figure out how Warhol got the diamond dust precisely where he wanted it and not where he did not. He proclaimed that it was “model railroad glitter” that Warhol attached with spray adhesive. While I do not really think this completely accurate, it made me think:
- Rather than using a screen to get the diamond dust precisely where he wanted it, I think that he used the screen to get the glue (or whatever adhesive he used) where he wanted it just like he would have if it were paint.
- When this was done, he probably covered the canvas in diamond dust. At this point, the dust would stay where he wanted it.
- o In order for this to work, the other layers of paint would have to be completely dry.
- o The darkness of the diamond dust depends upon the density with which it is applied to the canvas.
- Probably sanded away or otherwise removed the diamond dust where they did not originally want it.
