The 607 paintings and one sculpture documented in Volume 4 of The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne were produced during a period of less than three years, from late 1974 through early 1977. In September 1974, Warhol changed studios, moving across Union Square from the sixth floor of 33 Union Square West to the third floor of 860 West Broadway. Like Volumes 2 and 3, Volume 4 is identified with a new studio, where Warhol continued to work for a decade, until he moved into his last studio at 22 East 33rd Street on December 3, 1984. Volume 4 may be seen as the first in a series of books associated with one studio that will document an enormously productive ten-year period in Warhol's oeuvre from the mid seventies to the mid eighties.

A riveting excursion through Warhol's incomparable personal collections, from the bizarre to the illuminating Andy Warhol (1928-1987) remains an icon of the 20th century and a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. He also was an obsessive collector of things large and small, ordinary and quirky. Since 1994, The Andy Warhol Museum has studied and safeguarded the artist's archive encompassing hundreds of thousands of these objects, at turns strange, amusing, and poignant. From this array, many of these items have been researched and described in this book for the first time. Written by Matt Wrbican, the foremost authority on Warhol's personal collection, A is for Archive features curated selections from this collection, shedding light on the artist's work and motivations, as well as on his personality and private life. The volume is organized alphabetically, honoring Warhol's own use of a whimsical alphabetical structure: "A is for Autograph" (a selection of signed objects, many of which influenced his most popular works), "F is for Fashion" (featuring his collections of cowboy boots, neckties, and jackets), "S is for Stamp" (works of art by Warhol and others relating to stamps and mailed items), and "Z is for Zombie" (a grouping of photographs and ephemera of Warhol in various disguises: drag, robot, zombie, clown). The book also features an insightful essay by renowned art critic and Warhol biographer Blake Gopnik. For the myriad fans of Warhol and his quixotic world, this volume is essential and unforgettable.

"This third volume of the catalogue dedicated to publishing the complete paintings, sculptures and drawings of Andy Warhol (1928-87) focuses on the years 1970 to 1974. With the authoritative writing and fascinating attention to detail of the first two volumes, Warhol's works of these four years are comprehensively catalogued and illustrated, with the exception of the drawings to be included in a subsequent volume.
At the time this volume begins Warhol had been working at his second factory, his studio at 33 Union Square West, since 1968 and his painting activity had not resumed since his recovery from having been shot that same year. He did not have a painting studio at this building until late 1971 or early 1972 and was instead concentrating on film and sculpture, including the ""Rain Machine,"" as discussed in Chapter One. It was the acquiring of his first Big Shot polaroid camera that shifted his momentum back to painting again and he began to photograph his sitters, taking 25-100 shots, to capture a personality before beginning a painting.
Portraits of key figures of the time demonstrate his development of his new painterly style, mature by late 1972. The ""Mao Series"" was the first painting series since 1968, consisting of at least 199 paintings made between March 1972 and August 1973. His Mao paintings premiered in a grand exhibition in Paris in early 1974, and his portrait subjects included many of the most socially prominent and fashionable members of Parisian society, such as Yves Saint Laurent, Helene Rochas, and Sylvie de Waldner, as well as members of the international art world such as David Hockney, the dealer Alexandre Iolas, Henry Geldzahler. His painting style at this time was summed up by Warhol himself as 'sloppy and fast', painting wet-on-wet paint on top of the photographic image and screen prints, sometimes with fingers rather than brush. His style would change again in 1974 but in this volume we see several series and numerous commissioned portraits with this painterly style. He worked on series alongside commissions, and that of the Dada and Surrealist artist Man Ray, the subject of Chapter 5, was a series of some sixty works that developed from a commissioned portrait.
Including transcriptions, the diaries Warhol kept in 1972 and 1973, and the Polaroids he took on his travels through Europe and of his subjects, this volume has a strong narrative that presents the artist at a time of great change in his work. The 1970s have been often neglected in studies of Warhol's career and this volume, highlighting his extraordinary engagement with the culture and society of the time, brings to deserved attention the work of the first four years of the decade."