c 1962 Andy Warhol COLUMBIA RECORDS BENEFITS BROCHURE a rare unrecorded document

Rejected by the Columbia Records Human Resources Department

Andy Warhol [Illustrator], Lawrence Miller [Designer]: MAJOR MEDICAL EXPENSE INSURANCE. [New York: Columbia Records, n. d., 1962]. Slim square quarto. Thick textured stapled wrappers printed in two colors. 12 pp. Benefits brochure with 6 uncredited illustrations by Andy Warhol printed in two colors. Uncoated page edges lightly toned. The center spread has pulled loose from the stapled binding. Final leaf neatly separated along binding edge and laid in.  A good example of a previously unrecorded Warhol document. Of singular rarity.

5.75 x 5.75 stapled booklet featuring cover design and five custom interior illustrations by Andy Warhol.  This booklet was part of the slipcased “Your Columbia Records Personnel Library” set produced in-house at Columbia Records and Designed by Lawrence Miller and Art Directed by Reid Miles in 1962. Other volumes in the set were designed by John Alcorn, Robert Cato, Paul Davis, and Milton Glaser.

After the multi-volume set was printed, the Warhol booklet was rejected by Columbia’s Human Resources Department as “too fey.” Pushpin Studio’s Seymour Chwast was promptly hired to design a replacement edition that was then distributed to Columbia personnel. The entirety of the Warhol press run was trashed by Columbia, with this copy representing the first known example to come onto the market.

The “Personnel Library” set won an AIGA award in the 1963 Design for Printing and Commerce competition, with the submitted set subsequently placed into the AIGA archives. The archived set apparently does not include the Warhol booklet.

  This Columbia Records brochure includes no publishing information, but Warhol’s upward trajectory as an in-demand Commercial Artist has been well documented, as has his deep and abiding love of the feline form: “Andy Warhol couldn’t think of anything much to say except that he has eight cats named Sam, when asked for a character portrait, despite the facts, most of them gleaned elsewhere, that: he studied painting and design at Carnegie Tech in home-town Pittsburgh; came to New York in 1949; found Vogue, Glamour, and Harper’s Bazaar, among others, very pleased with such blotting-paper drawings . . . and won an Art Director’s Club medal for a drawing he did for the Columbia Broadcasting System.” — Interiors Cover Artists, Interiors and Industrial Design July 1953

From the Andy Warhol Museum: “Although best known for his silkscreen paintings, Andy Warhol was also an excellent draughtsman. Drawing was a constant part of his artistic practice. As a child he took classes at the Carnegie Museum of Art, and he won several awards for drawings he produced in high school. At Carnegie Institute for Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), where Warhol earned a degree in pictorial design, his offbeat, nontraditional and sometimes irreverent drawing style did not always meet his professors’ academic standards. At one point they forced him to do extra work over the summer to remain in good standing at school. Upon graduation, Warhol moved to New York to begin his commercial design career.

From the Andy Warhol Foundation: “Work came quickly to Warhol in New York, a city he made his home and studio for the rest of his life. Within a year of arriving, Warhol garnered top assignments as a commercial artist for a variety of clients including Columbia Records, Glamour magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, NBC, Tiffany & Co., Vogue, and others. He also designed fetching window displays for Bonwit Teller and I. Miller department stores.  After establishing himself as an acclaimed graphic artist, Warhol turned to painting and drawing in the 1950s, and in 1952 he had his first solo exhibition at the Hugo Gallery, with Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote. As he matured, his paintings incorporated photo-based techniques he developed as a commercial illustrator. The Museum of Modern Art (among others) took notice, and in 1956 the institution included his work in his first group show.

This booklet represents an anomaly in Warhol’s storied commercial illustration career: a piece that was rejected —albeit lately—by his client, and a true rarity with an unsurpassed provenance.

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