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CHRISTOPHER MAKOS’ WARHOL PORTRAITS AT YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY IN NYC

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NEW YORK CITY — “Christopher Makos: Warhol: Vintage Portraits” is on view through June 29 at Yancey Richardson Gallery.

“Warhol: Vintage Portraits” is an exhibition of photographic portraits of Andy Warhol taken by Christopher Makos over a period of two days in 1981 as a collaboration between the two artists. Titled “Altered Images,” the project resulted in 349 different images featuring Warhol posed against a plain white studio background wearing women’s makeup and wigs.

The project, inspired by Man Ray’s famous portrait of Marcel Duchamp posing as his alter ego Rrose Selavy, coincides with explorations of identity, gender and role-playing by other artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe’s feminized self-portraits and Cindy Sherman’s film stills.

In “Altered Images,” eight different wigs, two different makeup applications and a variety of poses and expressions transform Warhol into an array of different female characters, several of which reference his portrait subjects from the worlds of celebrity and society. Warhol customarily wore a man’s wig of blonde hair.

Born in Lowell, Mass., and raised in California, Makos apprenticed with Man Ray in Paris as a young photographer. In 1979, Makos’s art directed Exposures, Warhols’ first photography book. Makos’s latest book, WarholMakos in Context, was published by Powerhouse Books in 2007.

The gallery is at 535 West 22nd Street. For information, www.yanceyrichardson.com or 646-230-9610.