Andy Warhol’s Friendship with Mick Jagger

Much of Warhol’s work was inspired from a distance. A photograph of a celebrity or an accident depending on the month and Andy’s mood. Not so with Mick Jagger. Not only did Andy Warhol know Mick Jagger he met him through a friend that had known Jagger since he was cleaning apartments in Cambridge.

It was the interior designer and socialite Nicky Haslam that introduced Jagger and Warhol in the early 60’s. Jagger was just acquiring true fame as the front man for the Rolling Stones, and Warhol was very slowly gaining recognition as an artist to watch in the burgeoning “pop art” scene. Mick Jagger and later Bianca Jagger were frequent additions at the factory at the height of its notoriety for being New York’s “in” spot.

Warhol and Jagger would remain friends until Andy Warhol’s death in 1987

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Andy Warhol and Mick Combine Rock and Roll and Art

In 1971 Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger collaborated on The Rolling stones eleventh album. Sticky Fingers. In 2003 the Album cover would be voted the best album cover of all time. Today it sits at number 22 according to Billboard.

The cover is a photograph of Model and Actor Joe Dallesandro. In 1971 at the time the cover was contracted Mick asked Warhol to produce something simple and easy to reproduce. Warhol ignored him and went with a complicated sepia toned photo (taken by Billy Name) and a zipper that unzipped revealing white briefs with a gold rubber stamp of Andy Warhol’s name.

There may have been a conflict when the album was produced but it is by far and away the most legendary of the Stones album covers.

The origin behind Andy Warhol’s Mick Jagger Suite

 

Many might want to explain away the suite as an extension of the friendship between Jagger and Warhol. True to form it was a business proposal from Seabird Editions Company in London that inspired the series. In 1975 they offered to publish the screen prints. At this stage in his career, Warhol was making most of his money of portraits. $25,000 would get you a set of 4, 8 or 10 portraits. This series was shot at Andy’s beachside house in Montauk. Unlike many of his contracts, Warhol took the photos of Mick himself. Shirtless the photo’s captured many different moods that come through on the final suite. In the studio, both Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol signed the photos.

Details:

Edition of 250, 50 Artist Prints, three personal Prints. Signed in pencil lower right and numbered in pencil. Some prints signed in green or red by Mick Jagger.

The work is screen prints on Arches Aquarelle (rough) paper.

Quotes Inspired by the Mick Jagger Suite

 

Mick Jagger  “The thing that he seemed to be able to do was to capture society, whatever part of it he wanted to portray, pretty accurately. That’s one of the things artists do, is show people later on what it was like. If you want to be reminded of a certain period, you can look at what Andy was doing then. He was very much in tune with what was going on. Of course, he was criticized for that, for being sort of trendy. But I think some people’s great forte is being so in touch.”