Rebecca X Warhol

Last Updated on December 7, 2025

Newly Released Warhol Images vs a Brand New Homage to London

4.0 out of 5.0 stars

As you enter the very small, glass-fronted and brightly lit 67 York Street Gallery in the Marylebone area of London, you are greeted by three historic photographs: some of the earliest portraits of Andy Warhol, taken in the early 1960s at the very beginning of the Pop Art Movement, which Warhol was instrumental in creating.

This is a very young, characteristically unsmiling Warhol, with his recognisable mop of platinum hair, photographed in his studio, The Factory, by the fine-art photographer William John Kennedy, in portraits that have been kept in storage for nearly 50 years and have now been released.

In the image that really grabbed me, Warhol, asked to show one of his works, raises a ‘Marilyn’, one of the earliest images of the glamorous film star to whom he would return again and again during his career; but, as the medium is transparent, you can see the artist standing behind it, so that the photograph is an arresting composite of artist and art.

Andy Warhol, however, is not the main attraction here.  For maybe the only time in his career, Warhol, the 60s, 70s and 80s enfant terrible of the New York art scene, plays second fiddle to another artist: Rebecca Walker, artist, visual poet and digital creator.   The exhibition marks the first public showing of her work.

Rebecca Walker’s work on show, a dozen pieces altogether, attests to her love of and fascination with London.  This is not, however, London as you know it – Rebecca Walker doesn’t do portraiture.  It is, rather, London as seen by her and depicted in pen and ink drawings with the finest, most delicate touch that create compositions the minute detail of which will keep you absorbed for a long time.

Take ‘Gathering for Christmas’.

So much of it is recognisable, yet the composition is all her own.  In the foreground, there’s what at first I thought was a busy skating rink, maybe Somerset House’s? But then the National Gallery façade in the background caught my eye; there was also Nelson’s column (off centre, but unmistakably itself) and the famed Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree.  And someone has a dog on the leash. Definitely Trafalgar Square, then… Further back, Tower Bridge frames St Paul’s Cathedral with its unmistakable cupola, and elsewhere the London Eye vies for attention with Big Ben.  Look closer, and you’ll discern so many more London landmarks.

Paired with it in a minute back room where caviar canapés were being assembled, and champagne bottles cooled, there was an even more fascinating piece. Entitled simply ‘Lumen’, it consisted of nine arches, in rows of three, each depicting a Christmas scene.  All, or most, contain Christmas trees, and all beg you to fill in the story.  Three people sit around a table as if dining together.  One, though, looks away from the other two.  Have they argued?  Does he not want to be there?

In another scene, people are paired together as if dancing, all except for one who looks on.  Is he sad because he has no partner?  Relieved not to be part of the general jollity?  It’s up to your to fill in the blanks.

Some of Rebecca Walker’s pieces point ever so lightly to the work of painter, illustrator and graphic artist Edward Bawden (1903-1989), but that’s no more than a whisper in the unbroken continuum of art history.

One piece in this exhibition is alone in its individuality. Entitled ‘Art Deco Underground’, it shows Rebecca Walker’s homage to a period she greatly admires, and depicts people sitting in an underground carriage under a scalloped ceiling.  The foreground is more spacious than in her other works, and although again, Walker follows her own path, the elements of Art Deco are effortlessly absorbed into the picture.

A delicate, imaginative blend of hand-drawn line work and cartography, Rebecca Walker’s work has been available online since 2017; the opportunity to see it in real life, as it were, is welcome and should not be missed.

Rebbeca X Warhol is at 67 York Street Gallery from 04/12 to 07/12

67 York Street Gallery
Marylebone
London, W1H 1QB

Looking for something different? We also recommend the Hayward Gallery’s Gilbert and George Exhibition