Ladies And Gentlemen (F. & S. II.136)

The subjects of the Ladies & Gentlemen series were recruited by Warhol’s friends Bob Colacello and Robbie Cutrone. Most of the models were spotted by the men in the Gilded Grape bar in Manhattan, a popular space where New York’s Black and Latinx trans women and drag queens came to spend time with one another. Warhol then took over 500 Polaroids of 14 sitters, paying each of them only $50. Warhol seemed to have been particularly enamoured by Ross who featured heavily in the series, across 52 Polaroids, 73 paintings, 29 drawings and five collage portraits.

Warhol explores themes of performance, glamour and personality throughout the series, and in this print show Ross in an elegant fashion as she poses in a headscarf, looking upwards with her hand elegantly draped around her neck. The black and white screen print has a grainy quality and expressive marks of brown, blue, pink, purple and yellow are layered on top. Similar to many of Warhol’s prints, this image explores the relationship between the mechanical screen print process and more abstract, gestural paint strokes. The splashes of colour also work to heighten the element of glamour in the portrait.