An Andy Warhol portrait of Blondie singer Debbie Harry, believed to be lost, has reappeared in rural Delaware. The 1985 artwork, along with a disk containing 10 digital image files signed by Warhol, is now up for sale, though the New York Post, which broke the news, didn’t disclose the location.
Warhol created these pieces on an early Amiga 1000 home computer while serving as a brand ambassador for the now-defunct tech company Commodore. This was part of a promotional event at New York’s Lincoln Center.
In her memoir Face It, Harry described how her portrait came to fruition: “Andy called and asked me to model for a portrait he was going to create live, at Lincoln Center, as a promotion for the Commodore Amiga computer. It was a pretty amazing event.”
She continued, “they had a full orchestra and a large board set up with a bunch of technicians in lab coats. The techs programmed away with all the Warhol colors, as Andy designed and painted my portrait. I hammed it up some for the cameras, turning toward Andy, running my hand through my hair, and asking in a suggestive Marilyn voice, ‘Are you ready to paint me?’ Andy was pretty hilarious in his usual flat-affect way, as he sparred with the Commodore host.”
Harry has said, “I think there are only two copies of this computer-generated Warhol in existence and I have one of them.”
The location of the second portrait has now been disclosed. For almost 40 years, it was displayed in the home of Jeff Bruette, Commodore’s digital technician who taught Warhol to use the computer.
Bruette is organizing a private sale of the Debbie Harry portrait along with the original Amiga disk, which contains eight images Warhol created during an Amiga World interview and an experimental image made during the production of the MTV show Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes, according to a report by Page Six on Monday.
“It’s been almost 40 years since I worked with Warhol—it was a life-changing assignment,” Bruette said. “For just as long, any time someone has seen the portrait of Debbie hanging on my wall, or learned that I was ‘that guy who worked with Andy,’ especially after the recent explosion of NFTs and digital art anyone who’s heard the story has been completely riveted. I thought it was time the world got to interact with this extraordinary artwork the way it was meant to be experienced.”
Bruette added that “parting with this collection now gives me the chance to help find it the right home. And, to be honest, could make retirement just a little bit more comfortable.”
The price for the Harry portrait has not been disclosed, but the Post speculated it could potentially sell for millions. In 2021, a series of five NFTs created from restored Amiga images taken from old floppy disks sold for $3.38 million at a Christie’s auction.
Besides the Harry portraits, Warhol created digital images of a Campbell’s soup can, flowers, and a reproduction of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1485–86). He mentioned to Amiga World magazine at the time that he intended to distribute these images, but he never managed to do so.
