Rorschach

This massive painting is over 13 feet tall and was created as part of a series inspired by the amorphous ink blots. Developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach in the early 20^thcentury, the Rorschach test consists of ten standardized blots for a patient to decipher. In this series, Warhol invented his own by painting one side of a canvas and then folding it vertically to imprint the other half, inspired by his mistaken impression that patients created these images for doctors to decipher. Said Warhol, “I thought that when you went to places like hospitals, they tell you to draw and make the Rorschach Tests. I wish I’d known there was a set.” Due to this misinterpretation, Warhol’s Rorschach series is one of the few in which the artist does not rely on preexisting images.