Many people claim to have known Andy Warhol or to have had a connection to him. I count myself among the very many, although my brief encounter with the famous artist may ultimately be a newly positioned question mark in art history. I was twenty-five years old working in my first professional role as an art director when I met Warhol in New York and a few months later interviewed him at his studio called the Factory. In addition to the interview that day, I sat beside Warhol and coached him a bit on how to use a software program as he made what may be the earliest known computer-generated, self-portrait created by a major, working artist. A print resulted from his endeavor and remains the extant artifact; to my knowledge, the digital file is lost and most likely does not exist. Over the last four decades, I have often been asked about the interview and the story about the image he created during our meeting.

In 1985, prior to my interview with Andy Warhol, Commodore International gave him a newly released Amiga computer to experiment with and to create images using ProPaint, at the time a new graphics software. On July 3, 1985, at Lincoln Center in New York, Warhol provided a demonstration to a full audience at the celebratory launch of Amiga World magazine (which I attended, as I was art director for the magazine) by “painting” on an Amiga a video-based screen grab image of Debbie Harry, the singer for the band Blondie. A few months later, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Guy Wright, and I met Warhol at his studio to conduct an interview with him while he also created a digital self-portrait that would become the cover image for a special issue of the magazine. Shortly after Warhol completed the image, in Cambridge, Massachusetts I found one of the few labs that could take a floppy disk and make a high-quality print from a digital file. This was the era before desktop publishing and integrated page-design software. The print from the digital file became the artwork I used for the magazine cover. I saved the print as a memento of what had been for me a pivotal experience, and today it remains in excellent condition.

Warhol’s image depicting himself seated before an Amiga, his hand holding a computer mouse, repeats itself onto the Amiga computer screen, echoing inside it like a room of mirrors. It is loaded with ideas, suggesting time and infinity, looking back and looking forward, being outside and inside the computer, the machine and the artist, the tool and the canvas, the artist and his self-portrait, and tradition embracing new technology. His creative painting of the image provides us with a reminder of the early days of digital imagery that is notably expressed in the size of the pixels that can easily be seen with the naked eye. Those were the early days of desktop computing when we could count pixels with our index finger on a screen.

In the mid-1980s, many questions were brewing about the legitimacy of using a computer as a tool for serious creative expression, which also calls to mind the debates exerted in the 1800s over the validity of using the mechanical device called the camera, for artistic expression. Warhol’s image making on the Amiga and the interview with him, were published in Amiga World magazine in January 1986. For many years after that release, authorities of all sorts—artists, art curators, art collectors, and art auction houses—have argued that the original digital images and printed results of Warhol’s pioneering computer-based work have no real value (no monetary value, that is) because they were considered Warhol’s commercial work for which he was paid by Commodore to do,  therefore, that work is not considered pure artwork. After close to forty years, that argument is now changing.

Warhol died in 1987. Recent discoveries of artifacts surrounding Warhol’s work on the Amiga have surfaced, and with them, impressive prices. In May of 2021, Christie’s, in collaboration with the Warhol Foundation, sold five NFTs—digital image files of recently discovered and previously unknown computer-generated paintings that Warhol had made on the Amiga in 1985 and left stored on a floppy diskette—for $3.38 million. In August 2024, Artnet and Art Now LA reported that several items compiled by a Commodore technician who was present at the Amiga World launch event and our interview session are up for sale for $26 million. Several other online publications have also reported on the intriguing narrative and seemingly staggering asking price.

I find it interesting to read the news headlines, online articles, and social media posts and to follow how Warhol’s work on an Amiga computer has been told, repositioned, and resold after years of cynicism. The narratives have changed since 1985, when the confluence of creative expression integrated with computer technology provoked great debate. Today, AI is provoking similar examinations, albeit on much higher levels, yet analogously touching on relevant issues concerning artistic creativity, authorship, and ownership. Warhol’s ostensibly pioneering work holds originative value that embraces what, at the time, was emerging new technology; technology that is now viewed as primitive. Chief among his body of computer-based imagery from 1985 is his self-portrait, perhaps the first of its kind by a major, working artist. One print, made directly from the original digital file, remains extant. Prints were something that Warhol was interested in, and he discussed this importance in the interview session. This work is remembered not only as the illustration for a commercial magazine cover, but arguably it may also be an important document of Warhol’s creative history as it overlaps with computer technology history. Future debates may determine its place as a significant benchmark—or a small footnote—in art history.

Glenn Suokko, August 2024

Above and top: Andy Warhol and Glenn Suokko, The Factory, New York, 1985.

Above: Andy Warhol, Self-portrait, 1985, original digital print, 18¼ x 14¾ inches.

Left: The cover of Amiga World magazine, 1986, design by Glenn Suokko.