Andy Warhol's Ladies and Gentlemen

Andy Warhol's Ladies and Gentlemen series, created in 1975, stands as one of his most significant yet historically overlooked collections. Commissioned by Italian art dealer Luciano Anselmino, the series comprises over 500 paintings and screenprints featuring portraits of Black and Latino transgender women and drag performers from New York City's underground scene.

Among the most prominent subjects was Marsha P. Johnson, a veteran of the Stonewall Uprising and a pivotal figure in the gay liberation movement. While many subjects remained anonymous at the time, recent scholarship has worked to identify and credit the individuals portrayed, including Wilhelmina Ross, who appears in over 70 works from the series.

The Ladies and Gentlemen series occupies a complex position in both art history and LGBTQ+ cultural documentation. Created during a period of significant social change, these works not only provided unprecedented visibility for transgender and drag performers in fine art but also captured a vital moment in LGBTQ+ history, documenting the vibrant drag and trans community of 1970s New York.

Today, the Ladies and Gentlemen series raises important questions about representation, agency, and the role of the artist in documenting marginalised communities – issues that remain acutely relevant in today’s discourse.

The series stands as both a celebration of gender nonconformity and a complicated artefact of its time, offering viewers an opportunity to reflect on how far society has come in its treatment of transgender individuals – and how far it still has to go.