Andy Warhol - Flowers (FS II.71)

Original Flowers Print by Andy Warhol

Flowers 71 by Andy Warhol is a screen print included in his super famous Flowers series from 1970. Warhol originally painted the flowers in 1964, and published the portfolio six years later. Among the complete portfolio, Flowers 71 displays Andy Warhol’s appreciation for beauty, both natural, yet stylistically synthetic. The original source image for the hibiscus flowers was found in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography. However, the use of the copyrighted photo resulted in legal trouble for Warhol. Photographer Patricia Caulfield sued him in 1966 for appropriating her photographs for the series. Using images from external sources was not new to Warhol, and had brought him great success. But, the threat of the lawsuit nudged Warhol to begin experimenting with his own photography as source material for his silkscreen prints, albeit out of necessity. 

In Flowers 71, the juxtaposition of colors breaks the beautiful monotony of the hibiscus. Isolating different colors in this way allows for distinguished features to emerge. For example, the idea of the isolated beauty in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, goes as such: “Sometimes something can look beautiful just because it’s different in some way from the other things around it. One red petunia in a window box will look very beautiful if all the rest of them are white, and vice-versa.” In Flowers 71, the two top flowers oppose the yellow hibiscus duo, giving them prominence in the print. Unlike real flowers, these don’t seem liable to decay, yet they attain a hauntingly fragile glow. The permanence of the print’s saturating hue remains imprinted in the eye of the viewer.