Shoes (F&S II 253)

About the Artwork Shoes 253 (1980) is a screenprint from Warhol's Shoes series. Bright high-heeled shoes cluster against a black background dusted with ground glass. Warhol and master printer Rupert Jasen Smith used pulverized glass rather than industrial diamond dust for finer grain and more even light.

The Props In September 1978, Warhol bought vintage 1950s shoes on Canal Street for $2 a pair. He wrote in The Andy Warhol Diaries: "It's just the shoes I used to draw, all the Herbert Levine shoes with the creative lasts." His assistant Ronnie Cutrone scattered them across the Factory floor. Warhol photographed the pile for hours, rearranging shoes between shots until the composition worked.

The Earlier Career Before the Marilyns and the Campbell's Soup Cans, Warhol drew shoes for a living. Through the 1950s he worked as a commercial illustrator for Glamour, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and I. Miller & Sons. In the Shoes series, he pulls those drawings back into his Pop work, two decades later, replacing pen with screenprint ink and ground glass.

What the Work Does The stiletto heel in 1980 Manhattan meant Studio 54, the Mudd Club, the particular charge of that city at that moment. Warhol knew this. He arranged the shoes to read like the end of a good night out, kicked off and left where they fell. The glass dust makes them glow. He turned $2 Canal Street finds into something collectors want to own.