Exhibit chronicles how Andy Warhol’s screen prints went from sloppy to chic

At first glance, Good Business: Andy Warhol’s Screenprints, the latest exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum, might seem a little too familiar. But the 85 prints on display, along with archival and educational materials, in theory, serve as an accessible way to enjoy the everyday again and again.

“We haven’t really had a show highlighting just the prints in quite a while,” Amber Morgan, the Warhol Museum’s director of collections and registration, tells Pittsburgh City Paper.

The show’s pop art section covers iconic images, Morgan says, that are the most popular, including those of celebrities and Campbell’s soup cans. A lesser-known foursome of daisies feels particularly happy on a rainy spring day in Pittsburgh (as do the “Space Fruit” lemons displayed elsewhere).

“Even if you don’t understand pop art, you’ve seen soup before,” says Morgan, “so there’s always a way to engage in a conversation.”

The show, now on view through Sept. 1, features beloved and lesser-known pieces selected from the museum’s collection. Warhol began experimenting with silkscreen printing in 1962, and the exhibition’s first section, which focuses on process and technique, includes some of those early works.

“He’s becoming familiar with the material, the medium technique, and he’s really excited about it,” says Morgan, adding that the early pieces have “a little sloppiness,” including “muddy and murky” prints of $2 bills.

Warhol said he was attracted to the medium because it was “quick and chancy,” first experimenting with images of actors Troy Donahue and Warren Beatty, and then creating his famed portraits of Marilyn Monroe. It also turned out to be a good way to earn money to fund his avant-garde projects. The title of the exhibition comes from Warhol’s ethos that “business is art and working is art and good business is best art.”

At first, Warhol embraced the potential for imperfection within the form, but, Morgan says, “then almost immediately abandons it and goes for really sharp, crisp printing, which is basically the rest of the show.”

That’s not to say that those pieces are mechanical. Ever the trickster, Warhol “introduces elements that make them look hand-drawn, but those are all layers of the screen,” Morgan says. Think of the scribbles on Chinese politician Mao Zedong or the collage paper effect on trans activist Marsha P. Johnson. “It’s an interesting commentary on what printmaking is and what it can be pushing at.”

Screen printing also made Warhol’s work relatively affordable. His first prints of Marilyn Monroe, for instance, sold for $225. (Warhol’s work is now the most valuable among that of American artists; in 2022, one of his later Monroe portraits fetched a record-breaking $195 million at auction.)

Somewhere between $225 and $195 million, Warhol used his popularity for philanthropy. A wall of animal portraits, for instance, brought awareness to endangered species. The images are “something people really respond to, especially in these current times,” Morgan says. Prints that contributed to fundraising for causes such as cancer and AIDS research, ending famine in Africa, and others are documented with thank-you cards in the museum’s archive.

Donna De Salvo, a former adjunct curator at The Warhol, once said, “We might learn more about Warhol from what he gave away than from what he sold.”

Good Business also highlights the museum’s educational focus. Most sections include image source material or acetates used to make the screens. A video explains the complicated printing process (though visitors can try it for themselves in the museum’s all-ages studio). The exhibit as a whole is designed to travel for less cost-prohibitive insurance, “specifically to some smaller, regional domestic venues,” Morgan says.

But Warhol could not have succeeded with printmaking without collaboration. He relied on assembly-line-style production with assistants and printers and eventually created his own print-publishing company, Factory Additions, and, later, Andy Warhol Enterprises, Inc.

While Pittsburgh did not remain home to Warhol, the city remains home to both screen printing and artistic collaboration. Artists Image Resource (AIR) connects artists, students, and the community, and, like the Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media, offers workshops and classes on the art of screenprinting. And established print artists can join the coworking space at the PULLPROOF silkscreen studio in Garfield.

Anna Shepperson, co-founder of PULLPROOF, describes screen printing as “a different way of thinking about image making, where you’re thinking about each individual color and how it interacts with the other pieces of the picture.” Each color requires a layer in the creation process, which seems remarkably tedious but can yield a delightful result.

PULLPROOF occupies a stretch of Penn Avenue where a monthly art crawl illustrates what Shepperson describes as the friendly and accessible nature of Pittsburgh’s art community.

To that end, Good Business could help generate interest in the local screen-printing scene. Morgan called the exhibition “a chance to elevate printmaking in general, which I think is even more important for our local audience who maybe aren’t familiar.”

This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2025.