A celebrity-studded crowd thronged the opening of Andy Warhol and Jamie Wyeth's 1976 dual portrait exhibition, anxious to see how the "Patriarch of Pop" and the "Prince of Realism" would portray each other. Warhol's contribution included this monumental drawing, an image that subverts our expectations of both drawing and photography. Instead of sketching from life, Warhol traced the face from a projected photograph-the same one he used to create a series of glamorized paintings of Wyeth. However, the insistent zigzag lines fight against the handsome features, undermining any firm sense of contour and challenging the authenticity of the camera's eye. Brutally cropped across the scalp, Warhol's mammoth head of Wyeth accosts the viewer with an edginess that signals ambitious new directions for works on paper.
