Out of Sight: An Art Collector, a Discovery, and Andy Warhol

Gregory McCoy, a noted New Jersey Andy Warhol Collector, discovered four remarkable and unknown silk screen prints of Marilyn Monroe in 2009. He purchased four proof copies from a Swedish art dealer and has spent the past twelve years acquiring over three hundred multicolored Marilyns. In 2016, McCoy was introduced to Penn Libraries Director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and formed a partnership to exhibit a selection of the Marilyns. The catalogue includes an interview with the collector, essays by noted Warhol scholars, an essay on the 1965 ICA exhibition, and an essay on the iconography of Marilyn Monroe. The volume concludes with a Catalogue Raisonné of the McCoy Marilyns collection, commemorating the year in which the prints were made.

Format: Hardback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 05 September 2023
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Gregory McCoy, a renowned New Jersey Andy Warhol Collector, made a remarkable discovery in 2009 while browsing online. He stumbled upon four unknown and remarkable silk screen prints of Marilyn Monroe that bore a striking resemblance to Andy Warhol's iconic 1962 silkscreen portrait of the actor. Intrigued, McCoy embarked on a quest to uncover the origins of these Marilyns. Through diligent research, he discovered that the screen prints were likely created in Sweden in 1968, coinciding with Warhol's first international exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Excited by his find, McCoy embarked on a mission to acquire over three hundred multicolored Marilyns. These prints, which were not used in the Stockholm exhibition, were gifted to a circle of Swedes associated with Pontus Hultén, the controversial Director of the Moderna Museet. In 2016, McCoy was introduced to the Director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Penn Libraries. After examining a sample of the Marilyn silkscreens, McCoy and Penn Libraries formed a partnership to exhibit a selection of the Marilyns. Why Penn? Penn had played a significant role in launching Warhol's career when the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) mounted Warhol's first institutional retrospective of his work in 1965. The ICA exhibit is legendary, and McCoy believed that Penn was the ideal venue to unveil his important discovery to the art world. However, the question of Andy Warhol's role in the production of this collection of Marilyns remains unanswered, which adds to the intellectual challenge of defining these art objects within the context of Pontus Hult.

Weight: 1536g
Dimension: 252 x 302 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780578850917