The Many Lives of Warhol's Brillo Boxes: From Schopenhauer to Forgery

The article traces the philosophical and art-historical journey of Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes, from their origin in 1963 when the Brillo Manufacturing Company commissioned Abstract Expressionist painter James Harvey to design the graphics for its soap pad boxes, through Warhol's 1964 exhibition at Stable Gallery where he presented handmade wooden replicas, to later iterations by Mike Bidlo and a forgery scandal involving curator Pontus Hultén. Harvey's design used red, white, and blue with bold lettering; Warhol's versions were silkscreened onto plywood, identical to the commercial product. Arthur Danto argued the difference is invisible: art embodies meaning. In 2005, Bidlo exhibited Not Warhol (Brillo Boxes 1964), exact copies of Warhol's. In 1990, Hultén had 105 Brillo Boxes fabricated in Malmö, claiming they were authenticated by Warhol in 1968—three years after the artist's death. The forgery emerged in 2007. The article frames the series through Schopenhauer's concepts of representation and will, noting that Warhol likely did not intend such philosophy. Harvey initially fumed, 'Andy is running away with my box!' but later quipped, 'What's one man's box, may be another man's art.'