Andy Warhol’s Long-Lost Portrait of Blondie Singer Debbie Harry Resurfaces in Delaware
artnews.com
By Francesca Aton – 31st July 2024
An Andy Warhol portrait of Blondie singer Debbie Harry that was thought to be lost has resurfaced in rural Delaware. The 1985 portrait, along with a signed disk of 10 digital image files by Warhol, is now being made available for sale, although the New York Post, which first reported the news, did not specify where.
When Warhol was a brand ambassador for the now defunct tech company Commodore, he created the artworks on an early Amiga 1000 home computer as part of a promotion at New York’s Lincoln Center.
In her 2019 memoir Face It, Harry described how her portrait came to fruition: “Andy called and asked me to model for a portrait he was going to create live, at Lincoln Center, as a promotion for the Commodore Amiga computer. It was a pretty amazing event.”
She continued, “they had a full orchestra and a large board set up with a bunch of technicians in lab coats. The techs programmed away with all the Warhol colors, as Andy designed and painted my portrait. I hammed it up some for the cameras, turning toward Andy, running my hand through my hair, and asking in a suggestive Marilyn voice, ‘Are you ready to paint me?’ Andy was pretty hilarious in his usual flat-affect way, as he sparred with the Commodore host.”
Harry has said of the works, “I think there are only two copies of this computer-generated Warhol in existence and I have one of them.”
Now, the location of the second portrait has been revealed. For nearly 40 years, it was displayed in the home of Commodore’s digital technician Jeff Bruette, who taught the artist how to use the computer.
Bruette is planning a private sale of the Harry portrait and original Amiga disk containing eight images Warhol made during the Amiga World interview, plus an experimental image created during the production of the MTV show Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes, Page Six reported on Monday.
“It’s been almost 40 years since I worked with Warhol—it was a life-changing assignment,” Bruette said. “For just as long, any time someone has seen the portrait of Debbie hanging on my wall, or learned that I was ‘that guy who worked with Andy,’ especially after the recent explosion of NFTs and digital art, anyone who’s heard the story has been completely riveted. I thought it was time the world got to interact with this extraordinary artwork the way it was meant to be experienced.”
Bruette added that “parting with this collection now gives me the chance to help find it the right home. And, to be honest, could make retirement just a little bit more comfortable.”
Though the price for the Harry portrait remains undisclosed, but the Post speculated that it could sell “for potential millions.” A series of five NFTs made using restored Amiga images from obsolete floppy disks in 2014 fetched $3.38 million at auction with Christie’s in 2021.
In addition to the Harry works, Warhol made digital images of a Campbell’s soup can and flowers, and a copy of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1485–86). At the time, he told Amiga World magazine that he planned to distribute the images, but he never succeeded in doing so.
