Ladies and Gentlemen (Ivette and Lurdes), 1975

Gift of the Artist 

Estate of Paulette Goddard, New York, circa February 1976 

Sotheby's Arcade, auction, New York, 10 October 1990, lot 427 

Private Collection 

Sotheby's Arcade, auction, 7 February 1996, lot 268 

Estate of Robert Noakes

Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, New York, 1975, page 54 

Joseph D. Ketner II, Image Machine: Andy Warhol & Photography, Nuremberg, 2013, page 57 

Georg Frei and Neil Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings & Sculptures 1974-1976, vol. 4, New York, 2014, page 183, reproduced page 154, no. 2992

This work is from one of Andy Warhol’s largest, most ambitious and lucrative series of paintings, but least known. Warhol shot over five hundred Polaroids of fourteen drag queens recruited by his assistants at The Gilded Grape, a bar near Times Square, and in the West Village. Warhol produced some of his most painterly canvases and visually inventive prints from these Polaroids. The subjects are captured in sensual and brazen poses, elevated by Warhol to the status of celebrities and presented as desirable subjects despite being marginalized in society at the time. 

The series is extraordinary for its size, the number of models and the range of poses on display. The project was commissioned by the Turin-based art dealer Luciano Anselmino, whom Warhol met through the gallerist Alexandre Iolas. Anselmino coined the name of the series, which includes 268 paintings, approximately 65 drawings and collages, and a portfolio edition of ten prints. Warhol would shoot more than 500 Polaroids, an unusual number of photographs in preparation for a single commission. Despite their extensive sittings, each model was only paid between $50 and $100. Nine models signed their street or drag names on at least one of the Polaroids during their sittings, including Ivette and Lurdes in January 1975. While their names “went unrecorded when their portraits were exhibited during Warhol’s lifetime... he publicly observed the notional anonymity of his models in public, while privately archiving their names.” In 2014, the Warhol Foundation published an official list of all the Ladies and Gentlemen paintings, identifying thirteen of the fourteen sitters for the first time. The identity of the fourteenth model remains unknown. 

Warhol photographed Ivette and Lurdes individually and together in February 1974, who he would go on to paint in twenty-five portraits based on three Polaroids from their sittings. To fit both heads within the frame, Warhol rotated his Big Shot ninety degrees for seven of the Polaroids. Here, Ivette’s smaller oval face is nestled in the curve of Lurdes’ neck and shoulder, appearing less dominant than her friend. “In all fifteen Polaroids of the pair together, Ivette lurks shyly in the background, pressed against Lurdes from behind, as if the latter were her protector, as she may well have been on the streets… Clearly Ivette and Lurdes did not simply arrive at the Factory together but were like sisters, whom Warhol has grouped in a revealing family portrait.” Ultimately, Warhol was interested not only in capturing the contradictory character of his two models but also in the intimacy of their friendship. 

Warhol used his fingers as a stylus to etch contours and create textures in his paintings. Although he had been employing finger painting since 1973 to animate the painted surface, it increasingly became a method for drawing as well. With this series, he also changed his approach to creating artwork by layering colours instead of placing local colours and backgrounds side by side on the primed canvas. The layering of colour and the use of finger painting are characteristic of Warhol’s creative technique from 1975 to 1977. 

Against a uniform purple background, the faces of Ivette and Lurdes are represented in simple brushstrokes, with Ivette looking downward while Lurdes stares resolutely forward. The darker shade of purple superimposed over the figures and the black brushstrokes merge, thus visually tying Ivette and Lurdes together. In this reduced format, Warhol adopted a freer style and a more painterly background, exemplified in Lurdes’ broadly smeared hair with incised scribbles of the fingers into the paint. Even though Anselmino had only commissioned fifty paintings of this specific size, Warhol painted more than three times as many, producing 158 paintings in total. 

The paintings commissioned by Anselmino were exhibited in 1975 at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna in the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, which supposedly included this work. Despite receiving a negative response from the Italian press at the time, these “painterly works were a paean to the sensuality of the subjects as well as the act of painting, an indulgence of both his sexual and artistic fantasies.” As Warhol stated, “I’m fascinated by boys who spend their lives trying to be complete girls, because they work so hard double-time—getting rid of all the tell-tale male signs and drawing in all the female signs.” Through this series, the counterculture celebrity from New York explored notions of sexuality, memorializing these drag queens in paint and print, and ensuring they would not be erased from modern and contemporary history.

The provenance of this work is remarkable. As the dedication indicates, this work was originally given by Warhol to movie star Paulette Goddard, with whom he had been collaborating on an unfinished memoir since 1974. It was most likely presented to her at the opening of his exhibition in Zurich in February 1976. Over time, the work changed hands through various owners and auctions before being acquired by Robert Noakes, a renowned professional designer whose career spanned over fifty years. In 1970, he founded Robert Noakes Design in a small coach house in Toronto, later establishing Robert Noakes International Limited as his firm and stature grew. Robert had a deep passion for art, which inspired him to build a collection of over 250 works by Canadian and international artists.