Andy Warhol's Jock Art

As you all know, Andy Warhol is responsible for some of the most recognizable and iconic images of the twentieth century. The Marilyn prints, the Campbell's Soup Can paintings... they are everywhere and his artistic endeavors, on a mainstream level, are more often remembered for their pop-art qualities and avant-garde grandiosity.

But for all you New Yorkers, you have a chance to see the raw simplicity that lay behind Warhol's method, in a series of straightforward portrait shots that is being shown at Danziger Projects.

Shot with the Big Shot camera, the show features a series of Polaroids of famous athletes of the 1970s and early '80s. Though the images are tiny (4 1/4'' x 3 3/8'') there is a larger-than-life quality surrounding them. The straightforward shots capturing Muhammad Ali, Dorothy Hamill, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Pelé, and Wayne Gretzky at the height of their youthfulness and fame, is tingle-inducing.

The portraits were originally commissioned by a collector in the 1980s, and can now be seen at

Danziger Projects at 534 West 24th Street, through December 12th.