Cow wallpaper

Andy Warhol's Cow wallpaper was the first in a series of wallpaper designs he created from the 1960s to the 1980s. Some of Warhol's work has been described as being Keatonesque.^[1]

According to Warhol, the inspiration for the cow theme stemmed from art dealer Ivan Karp: "Another time he said, 'Why don't you paint some cows, they're so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts.' (Ivan talked like this.) I don't know how 'pastoral' he expected me to make them, but when he saw the huge cow heads — bright pink on a bright yellow background — that I was going to have made into rolls of wallpaper, he was shocked. But after a moment he exploded with: 'They're super-pastoral! They're ridiculous! They're blazingly bright and vulgar!' I mean, he loved those cows and for my next show we papered all the walls in the gallery with them."^[2]

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