A. Warhol Christmas

Many moons ago, I acquired these unusual Warhol Christmas cards. And no, this post is not tropical or home-oriented, it's just seasonal. I'm cuckoo for mid-century illustration, and Christmas, and well, Warhol too. So you're basically looking at a trifecta of aesthetic yuletide proportions here. Plus it has the universally gleeful greeting of "Happy Happy Everything" that works in a pinch every time.

I know very little about these cards. I say "cards" because they are printed on card paper but they aren't folded like a traditional greeting card. They could be the dismembered fronts of folded cards or they could have been a grouping, made as a portfolio of printed pieces. The backs are completely blank. My best guess is this: Back in the late 50s early 60s, Fritzie Miller was a cool, modern-thinking artist representative with a roster full of hip young designers and illustrators for whom she found work at the chic magazines of the day like Harper's, Vogue, Esquire, etc. So being that these cards are "signed" from Fritzie and Max Miller, I'm thinking she had her artists take a piece from their portfolio and repurpose it as a card. I say this because I'm pretty sure I've seen some of these illustrations in their original settings. If anyone has any more info about these, please do let me know.

There are a number of books that have good compilations of Warhol's commercial illustrations (which half the time were not even drawn by him as he employed people like Nathan Gluck and others to do the physical drawing based on his style) We have a few of these books, my favorites are Pre-Pop Warhol and Andy Warhol: Illustrations and Drawings of the 1950's.