Bald Eagle 1983

This is Andy Warhol's "Bald Eagle", and it's an explosion of color and process. The way Warhol uses that screen printing technique, it’s like he’s letting the image just barely come together, but not really. It’s all about the layering. Look at how he renders the eagle's feathers with these bold outlines in white, blue and pink. It’s like he’s saying, "Here’s the thing, but here’s also all the ways you could see the thing." And that background is a really hot, bold red that is both flat and somehow pulsating. I think about how it’s not really about the eagle itself, but the idea of it. He's playing with the way we see symbols and icons, and it's all about the conversation between the image and its making. Think about how Warhol takes something familiar, like the eagle, and remakes it, that feels like a conversation you could also have with someone like Robert Rauschenberg. Art is all about remixing, reconsidering, and keeping the dialogue going.