This painting belongs to a series modeled on the famous "inkblot" test invented by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach. Whereas the actual test provides ten standardized blots for a patient to decipher, Warhol invented his own, achieved by painting one side of a canvas and then folding it vertically to imprint the other half. Ironically, Warhol originally misinterpreted the clinical process, believing that patients created the inkblots and doctors interpreted them: “I thought that when you went to places like hospitals, they tell you to draw and make the Rorschach Tests. I wish I’d known there was a set.” Because of this misunderstanding, Warhol’s Rorschach series is one of the few in which the artist does not rely on preexisting images.

Gallery label from

2013.

Medium Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Dimensions 13' 8 1/4" x 9' 7" (417.2 x 292.1 cm)
Credit Purchase
Object number 323.1999
Department Painting & Sculpture

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Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

American, 1928–1987 258 works online

Two exhibitions in 1962 announced Andy Warhol’s dramatic entry into the art world. In July, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, he exhibited his now-iconic Campbell’s Soup Cans .

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