On April 21, 1964, James Harvey walked into New York’s Stable Gallery to see an opening for a rising artist named Andy Warhol. The show—which attracted a line around the block, despite mostly negative reviews—consisted of 400 large replicas of supermarket product boxes. The ones that attracted the most attention were the 120 containers for Brillo cleaning pads. “Oh my god,” Harvey said when he saw the Brillo boxes. “I designed those.”
If I were the type of person to call something 'fascinating' – which I'm not, or at least, I don't – I might call Shadow Boxer, from this month's PRINT, a fascinating article.
Effectively an introduction to James Harvey, the abstract expressionist working as a commercial artist who designed the original Brillo packaging, it's certainly an intriguing examination of the story behind the story of the Brillo box made famous by Andy Warhol in his reframing it as Art.
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