Floppy disks hold key to Andy Warhol Commodore Amiga art mystery

MISSING art created by Andy Warhol on one of the first desktop computers has been re-discovered after 30 years.

ANDY Warhol was known to dabble in esoteric artworks, to put it mildly, but since his passing in 1987, you’d think that “new” Andy Warhol artworks would be rather thin on the ground.

But the Andy Warhol museum has announced that it’s uncovered new works by the artist, with a distinctly technological spin.

Back in 1985, Warhol dabbled with using a Commodore Amiga computer to create artworks under commission from Commodore itself. Some of his work was captured on film as part of an effort to promote the then-new Amiga 1000 computer.

Stepping back in time ... the Commodore Amiga computer equipment used by Andy Warhol in 1985-86.

That footage eventually ended up on YouTube, where artist Cory Arcangel saw Warhol experimenting with digital painting Blondie’s Debbie Harry. This led him to wonder where the saved floppy disks might have ended up.

Arcangel’s research unveiled the previously lost images, which include reworkings of Warhol’s famous Campbell Soup can in a distinctly computer-based style, as well as a three-eyed version of Botticelli’s The Birth Of Venus.

According to Matt Wrbican, chief archivist at the Warhol Museum, the artist struggled with switching from physical to digital media.

“In the images, we see a mature artist who had spent about 50 years developing a specific hand-to-eye coordination now suddenly grappling with the bizarre new sensation of a mouse in his palm held several inches from the screen.”