‘... as I was putting the phone down, I heard a loud exploding noise and whirled around: I saw Valerie pointing a gun at me and I realized she’d just fred it. I said “No! No, Valerie! Don’t do it!” and she shot at me again. I dropped down to the foor as if I’d been hit I didn’t know if I actually was or not. I tried to crawl under the desk. She moved in closer, fred again, and then I felt horrible, horrible pain, like a cherry bomb exploding inside me’ (Andy Warhol, quoted in Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, POPism: The Warhol Sixties, Orlando, 1980, p. 343) In 1968 an attempt was made on Andy Warhol’s life by Factory outlier, Valerie Solanas who shot and severely wounded him. A turning point in his artistic sensibility, the present work, painted 13 years afer the shooting, not only ofers a deeply personal exploration into Warhol’s encroaching sense of mortality, but also exhibits his all-consuming obsession with the events that both psychologically and physically scarred him. In Gun (Cowboy six shooter), the artist presents the viewer with a silkscreened silhouette of the same model of pistol that so nearly claimed his life.
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