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In brief: For many people, this writer included, the Commodore Amiga will forever hold a special place in their hearts. One famous fan of the 1980s/90s home computer was pop culture icon Andy Warhol, who was commissioned by Commodore in 1985 to create a series of works. Not only have they just been found, but they're also for sale.
Commodore paid the famous artist to create the art in a demonstration promoting the launch of the Amiga 1000 in 1985, which you can see in its entirety below. He created a digital image of Blondie's lead singer, Debbie Harry. Harry once said only she and another unnamed person had a copy of the image.
As reported by David L. Farquhar, former Commodore engineer Jeff Bruette, who was present during the demonstation, said in July 2024 that he has a print of the Debbie Harry image and a signed floppy disk containing eight more images Warhol created. Bruette said he'd had them on display in his home for almost four decades.
Bruette was the product manager of the graphics software Warhol used for the images, and holds the honor of being the person who taught the artist about computers and the Amiga.
Also read: The Commodore Story: Gone But Not Forgotten
Warhol was limited by the technology of the era: a 640 x 400 resolution, a digital camera that was better for monochrome images, and 4,096 colors – but only 32 could be used at a time. He also had to learn how to use a computer, even using a mouse was a new and not always easy experience.
This isn't the first discovery of Warhol's lost Amiga art. A series of images were discovered in his estate in 2014 by staff and students who were members of Carnegie Mellon University's computer club. The club also found two pre-production Amiga computers and a set of disks containing both the collection and the software used to create them. Andy Warhol fanatic and artist Cory Arcangel had asked the club for help after receiving permission from the Andy Warhol Museum in 2011 to search its collection.
The images were saved in an obscure file format that modern Amiga emulators could not read, but reverse engineering helped uncover 18 images, 12 of which were signed by Warhol. Farquhar believes Warhol was using the images as a way of experimenting with techniques.
Bruette is selling a print of the digital portrait of Harry, along with a Warhol-signed floppy disk with 10 images and other related items. These include:
- Photographs from the Amiga launch event video
- A second disk containing an additional eight digital image files created by Warhol during an interview with Amiga World
- One digital image file created as a test for Warhol's MTV series
- A copy of the digital image file of the Debbie Harry portrait
- A USB thumb drive containing backup copies of all digital image files
- An Amiga 1000 with keyboard, mouse, and monitor on which the original images may be viewed
- The sharing of all available press materials and media associated with the launch event
It's believed the sale could reach its $26 million opening asking price.