Andy Warhol & Keith Haring - Madonna/Sean Penn Wedding Gift - The Process

Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, Untitled, 1985, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.), Private collection

Photostat of a Polaroid of Sean Penn and Madonna attributed to Keith Haring, 1985, photostat, page size: 25.4 x 20.32 cm (10 x 8 in.), The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Small negative acetate of front page of New York Post, July 9, 1985, Final edition, 1985, printed ink on acetate, overall: 30.48 x 25.4 cm (12 x 10 in.), The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

© 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Keith Haring artwork © Keith Haring Foundation

Keith Haring (1958–1990), well known for his calligraphic style of graffiti art, was a "Warhol baby," belonging to a generation that venerated the artist they called "Papa Pop." Together the two artists painted several canvases that featured headlines about their friend, the young singer Madonna. This suite of paintings based on the July 9, 1985, New York Post refers to the media frenzy that ensued after nude photographs of Madonna, taken years earlier, were sold by the photographer and published in Penthouse and Playboy. Three works from the collaboration appropriate the metro edition's headline "Madonna: 'I'm Not Ashamed"; an equal number of paintings feature the tabloid's late edition headline, "Madonna on Nude Pix: So What!"

Warhol and Haring replaced the original photograph in the late edition source (a young woman wearing a tank top and "Staying Cool") with a photograph by Haring of Madonna and Sean Penn, who would marry later that summer. As Warhol noted in his diary, less than two weeks before the wedding: "I want to do a Madonna headline—the Post one: 'MADONNA ON NUDE PIX—SO WHAT?'—and use a photograph of her from a different day that would fit right in, but Keith wants to use a photo he took of her and Sean Penn. Which is kind of grey. But I'll do it both ways. We're doing a painting together for her wedding present."