When Andy Warhol chose a photograph from 1952 of Marilyn at the peak of her beauty and youth, he intended it to be an image frozen forever in perfect cinematic beauty. It was a fusion of Warhol’s two childhood passions: religion and celebrity: an iconic depiction and an object of worship.  He idolized Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, Jackie Kennedy, and Grace Kelly as superhuman beauties transformed into deities.  Later, Warhol realized that such a transformation need not be limited to movie stars and celebrities, and he knew how to capitalize on a universal truth: everyone wished for a sense of identity and to feel special. Imagine Andy’s usual deadpan delivery when he stated, “In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes”, and know he meant precisely what he was saying without a trace of irony, derision, or mockery.  But he could not have known how prophetic his words resonate today in a world dominated by social media platforms or that the exponentially accelerated ability to achieve status and celebrity would be treated as if it is a divine right. 

Warhol’s creative process usually began with a Polaroid shoot. He then transferred the image onto transparent film with the help of a projector so that he could trace the outline of the subject’s features and enhance the portrait to match his ideal sensibilities of youth, beauty, and attractiveness. Warhol’s portraits are often of a sitter unknown to us today, yet each portrait projects a timeless elegance that belies the ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ comment.  The subject in this case is the former Sachiko Bower, today Sachiko Goodman, one of New York’s top real estate brokers who continues to indulge in her great passion, art collecting.  When Sachiko Bower was created in 1977, the multiple images taken of her suggest she was as much a muse as one of Andy’s circle of friends who interacted with him as often as she could. Cataloged as an acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, the dimensions of Sachiko Bower conform to Andy’s insistence that all portraits be 40 by 40 inches. When asked why he was so adamant about size, he answered, ‘because someday I would like the Metropolitan Museum to take one of each person and put them all together as one big interlocking exhibition called “Portrait of Society.”  Expect a Sachiko portrait to be among them when it happens.