Dolly Parton by Warhol
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Updated: 14 hours ago
Dolly Parton met Andy Warhol at Studio 54 in the 1970s. They spent most nights on the couch just watching the room.
"Andy and I would mostly just sit on the couch and watch all these crazy people out there doing their thing"
she wrote in her 2023 memoir, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones.
The friendship became art in 1985. Warhol shot a batch of Polaroids of her and turned them into a small run of silkscreen paintings, each 42 inches square. He kept the palette pastel and soft, matched to her own look instead of the jarring colors he used on other sitters. Her platinum curls nearly swallow the background. Her lipstick and eyeshadow are pushed past real life, closer to a mask than a face.
That same year, Keith Haring photographed the two of them together, Warhol's own white hair standing in for Parton's wig. Warhol had already put her on the cover of his own magazine, Interview, the year before, illustrated in his signature style, with an interview he conducted himself.
"I'd love a glass of white wine"
she said, when he asked if she wanted lunch.
Before the paintings came the reference shots. Warhol took a grid of Polaroids of Parton in the same pose, each one a little different in angle and expression, then used them to make the silkscreens back at the Factory.
Dolly Parton died August 25 in Nashville, at 80. Her Warhol portraits remain in museum collections across the country, including SFMOMA and Crystal Bridges.
