Diana Ross – Silk Electric

MEET ANDY WARHOL (MEET YOU MUSEUM · IN SPACE) (BEIJING)

Warhol, Andy

1982

Offset Litograph

55 x 56 cm / Size with frame: 68 x 68 cm

This poster was intended for record stores to promote Diana Ross’s album Silk Electric.
The quadruple portrait of the soul/pop singer was essentially borrowed from Warhol’s Silk Electric
album cover design, with the main difference being that he rearranged the cover portraits to better
highlight the serialization of the image. Serial repetition of images had been Warhol’s trademark mode
of representation since the early 1960s.
The absence of the record’s title and the singer’s name was rather unusual for an album promotional
poster. In that sense, this poster is quite close to a Warhol painting. Only the RCA logo, clearly visible
at the bottom right over Ross’s neck, reveals the commercial aim of the poster. Worried about losing
sales, RCA placed a translucent sticker reading “Diana Ross Silk Electric” directly on the album cover.