Cow Wallpaper

Andy Warhol's Cow wallpaper was the first in a series of wallpaper designs he created from the 1960s to the 1980s. Some of Warhol's work has been described as being Keatonesque.

According to Warhol, the inspiration for the cow theme stemmed from art dealer Ivan Karp: "Another time he said, 'Why don't you paint some cows, they're so wonderfully pastoral and such a durable image in the history of the arts.' (Ivan talked like this.) I don't know how 'pastoral' he expected me to make them, but when he saw the huge cow heads — bright pink on a bright yellow background — that I was going to have made into rolls of wallpaper, he was shocked. But after a moment he exploded with: 'They're super-pastoral! They're ridiculous! They're blazingly bright and vulgar!' I mean, he loved those cows and for my next show we papered all the walls in the gallery with them."