Unidentified Man (Young Blond Mole Over Lip)
June 1986
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
dye diffusion transfer print (Polacolor)
Dimensions
image: 9.5 × 7.3 cm (3 3/4 × 2 7/8 in.) sheet: 10.8 × 8.6 cm (4 1/4 × 3 3/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.)
Accession Number
2016.22.304
Art Historical Context
Andy Warhol's *Unidentified Man (Young Mole Over Lip)*, in June 1986, captures an intimate moment through the artist's signature use of dye diffusion transfer print, or Polacolor—a vibrant instant color process from Polaroid cameras. This small photograph (image 9.5 × 7.3 cm) exemplifies Warhol's late-career fascination with candid portraiture, where he amassed thousands of Polaroids as raw material for larger silkscreen paintings and a personal archive of faces from his social orbit. As a cornerstone of Pop Art, Warhol blurred lines between celebrity glamour and everyday anonymity, often pho...
About the Artist
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, born Andrew Warhola Jr. on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was the youngest of three sons to Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants Ondrej and Julia Warhola. His devout Byzantine Catholic family nurtured his artistic inclinations; bedridden at age eight with Sydenham's chorea, he drew from comic books and Hollywood magazines supplied by his artistic mother Julia, who later influenced ...