The Politics of Antihero Aesthetics: Andy Warhol’s Thirteen Most Wanted Men at the 1964 World’s Fair

Abstract

The current paper examines a series of portraits called Thirteen Most Wanted Men that the famous American Pop artist Andy Warhol created on the occasion of his participation in the World’s Fair that took place in New York in 1964. The paper explores the economic-political context of the 1964 World’s Fair and explains how and why Warhol’s work got it to the façade of the New York State Pavilion designed by the prominent American architect Philip Johnson. The paper reveals the ambiguous nature of the antihero representation of Thirteen Most Wanted Men and studies the contribution of one of Warhol's art dealers Ileana Sonnabend to the international circulation of these paintings in the aftermath of the 1964 World’s Fair.