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It was 1977, and Andy Warhol was at work on his “Athletes” series, portraits of top sports personalities who, he felt, were gaining cultural prominence just like “the movie stars of yesterday.” One of them was then the star running back of the Buffalo Bills: O.J. Simpson.
Simpson, then 30, showed up without a football or a jersey, and Warhol had to scramble to find a ball. That Polaroid shoot led to 11 silkscreen portraits; one of them is now going on auction for the first time.
Signed by both men, the portrait is billed by the auction house as a work that brings together two of the most recognizable names of the 20th century and captures “a trajectory of celebrity and tragedy.”
“Warhol certainly could never have imagined how differently the image would come to be viewed, nor the controversy that still lingers around its subject today,” said Robert Manley, co-head of 20th century and contemporary art at the Phillips auction house, which is auctioning the work May 16.
It was almost two decades after Warhol’s photo shoot, in 1995, that Simpson — who had retired from the NFL in 1979 and pursued an acting career — was acquitted of the double slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
