He did work for publications such as
Mademoiselle and Glamour magazine.
“That idea of marketing and all the things
we take for granted was just something
Warhol was immersed in,” De Salvo said.
“And he was just such a sponge in his capacity
to absorb things.”
In 1963, he was commissioned to do his
first portrait, of modern-art collector Ethel
Redner Scull.
The artist took Scull to a photo booth in New
York, gave her a stack of coins and said, “Pose,”
Garrels said. She took 300 pictures, looking
playful, pensive and everything in between.
“From that, he makes this painting,” De Salvo
said: “Ethel Scull 36 Times,” a brightly colored
montage of images that anticipated modern-
day selfies and Instagram posts.
“You feel each moment,” De Salvo said.
“I think it’s really one of Warhol’s great
commissioned portraits.”
Warhol went on to do hundreds of portraits.
They provide a window into his social network,
which included friends, family members, lovers,
musicians, actors, athletes and world leaders.
De Salvo also notes the “multiplicity of images”
in Warhol’s work.
“This is where he’s such a genius of
permutation — that he could create so many
iterations of an image in an analog way, where
now there’s a software program to do that,” she
said. “There’s so many different ways. There’s a
‘Warholizer.’ He so anticipated what technology
would bring about.”