Andy Warhol — Mick Jagger (FS. 143), Poster

Andy Warhol is among the most recognisable artists of the twentieth century and, together with Picasso, one of the two names that shaped the visual grammar of the modern era. His Factory in New York became the meeting point of artists, musicians and celebrities, and it was there that the practice of turning a public face into an icon — through photography, screenprint and saturated colour — was perfected.

The collaboration with Mick Jagger is one of the best known of Warhol's celebrity portraits: a series of ten images of the Rolling Stones' frontman, made in 1975, in which the photographic source is overlaid with vivid colour and hand-drawn lines. The poster offered here was published after that series and reproduces its most celebrated image, Mick Jagger (FS. 143), with the drawing and the red accent on the lips that have become the signature of the portrait.

The relationship behind the images is part of their value. Warhol and Jagger met at a party in the 1960s, while the Rolling Stones were establishing themselves in the United States; the professional bond was sealed when Warhol designed the cover of Sticky Fingers in 1971. Four years later, during a summer stay by Mick and Bianca Jagger at Warhol's house in Montauk, New York, the photographs that became the series were taken. The portraits look past the rock star to questions of androgyny and image-making that Warhol found in Jagger's persona — the reason these images continue to be read as cultural documents as much as likenesses.