O.J. Simpson 1977

This is a portrait of O.J. Simpson by Andy Warhol, a painter who worked with synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas. Warhol often selected popular figures to portray and the former football player and actor Simpson was no exception. In the context of 1970s America, Simpson represented the ideal of the black athlete who was seen as appealing and harmless to a white audience. Warhol's choice of Simpson as a subject reveals much about 1970s cultural obsession with celebrity, and the politics of race. The layered effect of the silkscreen creates a sense of the artificiality of fame, and the image lacks the slick perfection one might expect from celebrity portraiture. By rendering Simpson in this way, Warhol offers a critique of the American celebrity machine. To learn more about this artwork, you might consult studies of Warhol’s other portraits and biographies of O.J. Simpson, as well as material about the artist’s wider cultural context.