Baseball

Former TitleRoger Maris

Artist Andy Warhol (American, 1928 - 1987)

Date1962

MediumSilkscreen on canvas

DimensionsOverall: 91 1/2 × 82 inches (232.41 × 208.28 cm)
Framed: 94 1/4 × 84 5/8 × 1 7/8 inches (239.4 × 214.96 × 4.75 cm)

Credit LineGift of the Guild of the Friends of Art and other friends of the Museum

Object numberF63-16

SignedVerso: "Andy Warhol 62" On stretcher: "Andy Warhol / 62"

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

Contemporary Art

Terms

DescriptionStencil painting in black on white in seven horizontal registers, of catcher, left, and left-handed batter swinging, facing right, proper right leg forward, left behind; many overlaps and elisions. Number of whole and fractional stencils, top to bottom.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Andy Warhol, Kunsthaus Zürich, May 26-July 30, 1978, no. 49.

Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, February 1-May 2, 1989; The Art Institute of Chicago, May 31-August 13, 1989; Hayward Gallery, London, September 7-November 5, 1989, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, November 20, 1989-February 5, 1990, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, March 8-May 27, 1990, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, June 19-August 10, 1990, no. 198.

Deborah Kass: My Andy, A Retrospective, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, June 22-September 15, 1996, no cat.

Andy Warhol and Photography, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, May 13, 1999-September 19, 1999, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg, November 6, 1999-Feburary 15, 2000, unnumbered.

Andy Warhol Retrospective, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, September 27, 2001-January 6, 2002, Tate Modern, London, Feburary 7, 2002-April 1, 2002, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, May 25, 2002-August 18, 2002, no. 97.

Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 10, 2012-December 31, 2012, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg, February 2, 2013-April 28, 2013, no. 4.

Up at Bat: Warhol and Baseball, Cincinnati Art Museum, April 7, 2015-August 2, 2015, no cat.

Gallery Label

Andy Warhol is a paragon of American Pop Art of the 1960s. Like other artists associated with Pop Art, he borrowed images from popular culture in defiance of traditional sources for fine art. Cultural icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's soup cans are featured in Warhol's silkscreen paintings. By using silkscreen, a technique used in mass production, Warhol further denied the notion of art as a unique object bearing the mark of an individual, artistic personality.

Baseball was the first photo-silkscreened painting by Warhol. It celebrates the American institution of baseball and incorporates a news photograph of New York Yankee Roger Maris. Maris became famous in 1961 after he broke Babe Ruth's home run record.

Provenance

With Stable Gallery, New York, 1962.

Purchased by the Guild of the Friends of Art and other friends of the Museum, by 1963.

Their gift to Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1963.

Published References

Ellen H. Johnson, Modern Art and the Object: A Century of Changing Attitudes (New York: Harper & Row, 1976) 97, (repro.).

Erika Billeter, Andy Warhol, exh. cat. (Bern: Benteli, 1978), 90, (repro.).

Sidra Stitch, Made in U.S.A.: An Americanization in Modern Art, the '50s and '60s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) 124, (repro.).

Kynaston McShine, Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, exh. cat. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1989): 210, (repro.).

Christoph Heinrich, Andy Warhol and Photography, exh. cat. (Thalwil/Zürich; New York: Edition Stemmle, 1999): 130, 131, (repro.).

Heiner Bastian, Andy Warhol: Retrospective, exh. cat. (London: Tate Publishing, 2001): 146, (repro.).

George Frei, ed. The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne Volume 1: Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963 (London; New York: Phaidon Press, 2002): no. 231.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (Kansas City:

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008): 218, (repro.).

Mark Rosenthal et al., Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012): 103, 104, (repro.).

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