Monday, June 17, 2013

Billy Squier's Emotions in Motion, by Andy Warhol

















"I realized that my record company was going to want to have my face on my album cover, but I didn't want it to be just me with a guitar," Billy Squier remarked recently, sounding somewhat humble, but Warhol paints a different picture of Squier's image at the time:

“Went to Madison Square Garden (cab $4) to see Billy Squier, he was just going on. Backstage there were about fifty nude girls serving hot dogs and beer and mud wrestling. Took pictures, then realized I didn’t have film in the camera.” - The Andy Warhol Diaries,  page 453.

Squier told the Boston Globe in 2005 "Andy was at the height of his popularity. So I called him up, and he said, "Sure." He asked me what colors I didn't like." Warhol took a series of polaroids and produced a couple of different silkscreens of the singer. Emotions in Motion was Squier's third album, released in July of 1982. The graphics were used as the LP cover and a picture disk 7", among other promotional items such as posters and buttons.

Squier wore (and famously tore open) an Emotions in Motion t-shirt in the music video that many consider the worst of all time. In Rock Me Tonite he tears off the shirt and replaces it with a pink tank top, and then continues to prance and preen. Squier credits the video with destroying his career.






The Warhol silk screen now hangs in his apartment.












Andy Warhol
Billy Squier 
screenprint in colors on museum board, presumably unique in this composition
60¼ x 40¼ in. (153 x 102.2 cm.)
Executed in 1982.
Estimated value: $12,000.00 - $18,000.00 US

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