Al Hansen | Andy Warhol Box

Al Hansen

Andy Warhol Box (Drei Attentat Bilder)

Cologne, Germany: Hundertmark Editions, 1986

16.5 × 22.5 × 1.5 cm.

Edition of 30 signed, dated and numbered copies

On June 3rd, 1968, Gerard Malanga, Al Hansen and three others visited Andy Warhol’s Factory, to pick up a cheque. 

"The [elevator] door opened on madness," recalled Hansen. "Mario Amaya jumping around, blood all over the back of his shirt. He presents his bloody back to me, asking over his shoulder, 'Is it in me, is it in me?' Someone's legs sticking out from behind the far desk. Jed is kneeling, holding the someone's hand, tears in his eyes.” 

“Who’s the other one?” Hansen asked. It was Warhol, who had been shot with a 32-caliber pistol at close range, by Valerie Solanas, who Malanga and Hansen had missed by a matter of minutes. 

Earlier in the year, Solanas was attempting to have her book SCUM Manifesto published, and her script Up Your Ass produced. She presented the latter to Warhol to read, who feared it was entrapment: 

"In fact, when we'd gone to Cannes with Chelsea Girls the year before and I'd given that interview to Cahiers du Cinéma, it was Valerie Solanis [sic] I was referring to when I said, "People try to trap us sometimes. A girl called up and offered me a film script . . . and I thought the title was so wonderful, and I'm generally so friendly that I invited her to come over with it, but it was so dirty I think she must have been a lady cop. . . .”

Solanas returned to the Factory to retrieve the script, believing that Warhol was plotting with her publisher, Maurice Girodias, to prevent it from being published. Warhol had apparently misplaced it. 

Solanas was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sentenced to three years in prison.

This boxed work (the 110th edition by Armin Hundertmark) was published a few months before Warhol died in February of 1987. It features an original ballpoint pen drawings, handwritten text, three photocopies of watercolors and a watercolor title page, housed in a paperboard box.