ABSTRACT
One day in New York City in 1964, Andy Warhol took an aspiring actress named Holly Solomon to 42nd Street. Once there Warhol tested a number of photo booths until he found one with high contrast. He then left Solomon in the booth with $25 in quarters. Two hours later, hot and bored, Solomon emerged from the booth with a shoebox full of pictures. She later gave the box to Warhol, who selected one of the photographs and gave it to an assistant. The assistant made silkscreens from the picture, and pressed a variety of brightly-colored inks through these stencils to reproduce the photograph on nine separate canvases, each 27" × 27". Completed in 1966, the nine panels constituted the portrait Solomon had commissioned from Warhol. Thirty-five years later, on the evening of Tuesday, November 13, 2001, Holly was auctioned at Christie’s in New York for a price of $2.1 million.
