Andy Warhol - Cow Screen Print (FS II.12A)

Original Cow Print by Andy Warhol

Cow 12A is a screenprint on wallpaper by Andy Warhol from 1976. Before the Cow series, Warhol’s oeuvre primarily focused on subjects clearly tied to consumerism or celebrity culture. In the mid-1960s, art dealer Ivan Karp suggested that Andy Warhol experiment with recognizable but more universal subjects. He suggested Warhol depict cows, noting that they were “wonderfully pastoral” and, “such a durable image in the history of the arts.”

Here, Warhol uses the pop-culture aesthetic to depict a long-standing subject of art history. He demonstrates that Pop-Art is unique not only for its subjects but for the style in which they are depicted. In the end, the manner of presenting subjects becomes an equally compelling component of the movement. Cow 12A is the last image in this series, which represented a turn for Warhol’s movement. Though Warhol is most well known for his depictions of commodified subjects, the Cow portfolio is an example of Warhol commodifying a universally recognizable subject by how it is represented.

Warhol’s Cows were printed in New York by Bill Miller’s Wallpaper Studio, Inc.