Athletes

Athletes was Andy Warhol’s sports-portrait project: a commissioned series in which celebrated competitors became subjects for the same carefully managed image-making that shaped his portraits of film and social celebrities. Its development joined individual sittings to a planned exhibition and a repeatable studio process. The surviving diary scenes also show that the athletes did not simply supply recognizable faces; their uniforms, bodies, and decisions about how to pose could influence what the pictures became.

Commissioning a sports-star series

The project took shape through Richard Weisman, who commissioned a series of sports-star portraits. In September 1977, Weisman and Fred discussed the commission, and the plan grew toward an exhibition of ten Athletes portraits. The diary records a disagreement over timing: the exhibition was being considered for December, while the diarist thought January would be better. The eventual public presentation was at Coe Kerr Gallery, where the Athletes show was on view by January 1978. A report about it appeared in People, placing the project beyond the studio and within the celebrity press.

Weisman’s role was more than that of a patron who ordered pictures. He followed the paintings closely and could react strongly to changes in Warhol’s approach. When he saw a new treatment of Chrissie Evert, composed as many small pictures rather than as one large image, he objected. A Newsweek interviewer present in the office liked the work, however, and Weisman subsequently called back repeatedly to apologize. The episode makes visible a negotiation around format and judgment: the series belonged to a commission, but its appearance remained open to Warhol’s experiments, and responses to those experiments could shift as other viewers weighed in.

The portrait-making process

Warhol’s commissioned portraits began with a sitting and a concentrated photographic session. He took about sixty Polaroid photographs of the subject with a Polaroid Big Shot camera, then selected four images for a screen printer to turn into positive images on eight-by-ten-inch acetate. From those, he chose one, determined the crop, and altered the image cosmetically. The account describes adjustments such as lengthening necks, trimming noses, enlarging lips, and clearing complexions: the photograph was not treated as a neutral record, but as material to be shaped toward an idealized likeness.

The chosen image was enlarged to a forty-by-forty-inch acetate, from which a silkscreen was made. Assistants prepared rolls of canvas in advance, using one flesh-toned background for men and a pinker flesh tone for women. Warhol transferred the image onto the canvas, painted selected colored areas, and then aligned the silkscreen over them. Small discrepancies between the printed image and the painted areas produced the characteristic shifting effect of the portraits. This sequence connected a real encounter with a subject to a reproducible image, while leaving room for deliberate alteration at every stage. The first canvas generally cost about $25,000, with each additional one priced at about $5,000.

Sittings, uniforms, and the athlete’s image

Tom Seaver came to pose on July 20, 1977, with Weisman also present. The session involved choices about the picture’s sports identity as well as its subject. The photographer wanted Seaver to wear a New York Mets cap, and they went out to buy one. He then proposed a deliberately mixed image: Seaver in a Cincinnati uniform with the Mets cap. Seaver refused. The diary connects that refusal to a recent change in his career: after being traded, he had bought a new house in Connecticut and, as the diarist understood it, now hated the Mets. The proposed combination of uniform and cap therefore met a subject whose relationship to the team had altered; the picture could not simply use team signs as interchangeable decoration.

Other sessions extended the project beyond the New York office. In October 1977, Warhol traveled to Massachusetts to photograph Dorothy Hamill for the Athletes portfolio, noting the pleasure of photographing someone he found especially pretty. The diary does not describe the finished image, but records the trip as part of the portfolio’s production: its subjects and sittings were gathered individually, rather than appearing as an abstract roster of famous names.

Format, circulation, and significance

The project’s changing formats were part of its history. Weisman objected when Chrissie Evert appeared in many small pictures instead of the large ones he expected, but the format survived his first reaction and became a point of discussion in the office. The account does not establish that every Athletes portrait used this arrangement; it does show that the series could accommodate variation, and that patron expectations, an interviewer’s response, and Warhol’s choices all met in the same working space.

Athletes also belonged to a wider economy of portraiture. Warhol’s commissions helped support his annual income and the operation of his office and magazine, while bringing sports figures into a visual system already associated with famous faces. The series’ path—from Weisman’s commission, through sittings and photographic editing, to exhibition and magazine coverage—shows how a portrait could function at once as an artwork, a commissioned likeness, and a public image. In the athlete sessions, that image remained subject to negotiation: a cap could be bought for the sitting, but a player could still refuse the uniform combination proposed for the camera.