andy warhol

SELF-PORTRAITS IN DRAG

Andy Warhol’s public image was indistinguishable from his many blond wigs. In his iconic collaboration with photographer Christopher Makos, he pushed this self-transformation further by appearing in drag.

Warhol was always fascinated by drag queens and queer culture, which he helped to introduce into the art world, while also partially instrumentalizing them for his own art. He was among the first major artists to understand that queer culture and cross-dressing are central to the history of glamour and self-invention, not as marginal gestures but as its hidden engine.

Cross-dressing functions as a radical act of self-transformation. Through these Polaroids, and the tension visible on Andy Warhol’s face, the artist reveals how hair and make-up expose identity as mutable, theatrical, and porous. Glamour becomes a form of visual resistance, refusing biological determinism and social prescription. In these pictures, Andy’s charismatic face becomes almost dramatic and melancholic, holding the…