The Thirteen Most Wanted [Inspiration for Warhol’s Censored Art]

New York: Police Department, City of New York, 1962. 6 ⅛ x 4 ⅝ in. Offset. Saddle stapled in wraps. 15 pp.

The booklet produced by the New York Police Department in 1962 that inspired Andy Warhol’s censored mural at the 1964 World’s Fair.

Asked by architect and curator Philip Johnson to produce a piece of public artwork for the pavilion of the World’s Fair, Warhol silk screened portraits of the NYPD’s most wanted on a 20 foot by 20 foot grid. The large panels would only last a matter of days and were quickly covered - first with cloth and then with silver paint - before the fair had even opened to the public. 

Though at the time the curator Philip Johnson claimed that the art had been destroyed because of Warhol’s displeasure with the work, he later admitted that he had bowed to pressure from then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who was fearful of highlighting criminality in New York and of alienating his Italian-American constituency - since many of the men portrayed were of Italian descent.

Distributed primarily to NYPD patrol officers in 1962, The Thirteen Most Wanted was inspired by the “most wanted” list first distributed by the FBI in 1950. An exceptionally rare document of policing history and the inspiration for the censored public artwork by the 20th Century’s most famous artist. No copies located in OCLC as of March 2021. 

Very good; some fold lines and discoloration to wraps, otherwise a tight clean copy.