Muhammad Ali (F. & S. II.179)

A commission about fame

In 1977 the collector Richard L. Weisman went to his friend Andy Warhol with an idea: a set of silkscreen portraits of the day's leading sports stars. The series became Athletes (1977-1979), ten sitters including Muhammad Ali, Pele, Jack Nicklaus, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chris Evert, Dorothy Hamill, O. J. Simpson, Rod Gilbert, Tom Seaver and the jockey Willie Shoemaker.

Warhol was not a sports fan. 'Andy didn't really know the difference between a football and a golf ball,' Weisman recalled, and it was Weisman who chose the athletes. Shoemaker agreed early, but other subjects resisted until Ali said yes. 'After that, everybody wanted to do it,' Weisman said. Warhol came around too: 'I really got to love the athletes because they are the really big stars.'

Between March and November 1977 Warhol crossed the United States with his Polaroid Big Shot camera, photographing each athlete himself and then transferring the chosen frames to canvas in the studio. The Athletes paintings were 40-inch-square canvases; Warhol made just eight sets.

Ali got more than one picture. Warhol used one Ali photograph for the Athletes series and four more for a separate portfolio of screenprints, published in 1978 as Muhammad Ali. This print, catalogued as Feldman & Schellmann II.179, is the first of the four.

Deer Lake, August 1977

Ali trained for every fight from 1972 to the end of his career at a camp he built on a five-acre site in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, known as Fighter's Heaven. Warhol went there in August 1977 with Weisman, his business manager Fred Hughes and the writer Victor Bockris, who photographed Warhol and Ali together on August 18, 1977.

The encounter was lively. Ali, never one to keep his opinions to himself, was astonished at what art collectors would pay: 'white people gonna pay $25,000 for my picture?! This little negro from Kentucky couldn't buy a $1,500 motorcycle a few years ago, and now they pay $25,000 for my picture.' The writer Davis Miller later described the Ali in Warhol's Polaroids as 'dispassionate,' not the showman the public knew.

One account says Warhol shot 56 Polaroids of Ali and chose four for the screenprints. Two of the four show his fists; the other two are more introspective head studies. In II.179 Ali is seen in profile facing left, toward an unseen opponent.

Champion, ex-champion, champion again

Ali was 35 and heavyweight champion of the world when Warhol photographed him. A month later, on September 29, 1977, he beat Earnie Shavers by unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden, taking hard punches to the head; afterward his longtime doctor, Ferdie Pacheco, quit when Ali rebuffed his advice to retire.

On February 15, 1978, Ali lost his titles to Leon Spinks, who had only seven professional fights, by split decision in Las Vegas. On September 15, 1978, in front of 70,000 people at the Superdome in New Orleans, he won the rematch by unanimous decision and became the first heavyweight champion to win the belt three times. Kentucky's governor proclaimed 1978 the 'Year of Ali.'

The portfolio is dated 1978, the year of that loss and comeback. Sources differ in how they frame the timing: one interview describes Ali as a third-time champion at the 1977 sitting, but his third title came in September 1978, more than a year later.

Warhol was at the height of his own celebrity. Studio 54 had opened in April 1977, and he was a regular. He had already turned the screenprinted celebrity portrait, from Marilyn Monroe to Elizabeth Taylor, into his signature form; the Athletes extended it to a new kind of star.

How to identify II.179

II.179 is the profile. Ali faces left. Warm brown blocks of color carve the planes of his face, turquoise accents frame the jaw and neck, and a soft coral-pink ground fills the sheet. Warhol carried the pink of the background over the top of Ali's head and then drew the outline of the hair back in with a thin black line. The other three prints show Ali looking down as if slipping a punch (II.180), his fist and chest (II.181), and facing front behind his gloves (II.182).

The edition is 150 impressions, plus ten artist's proofs, published by Andy Warhol Enterprises, Inc. One dealer also records a single printer's proof. Each sheet is about 40 by 30 inches on Strathmore Bristol paper. Warhol signed and numbered the edition in felt-tip pen at lower right on three of the prints, but at lower left on II.179.

Ali did not sign the prints as they were published. According to Harlan Werner, Ali's memorabilia agent for more than 30 years, only six complete portfolios are known with both signatures; Ali signed them on July 13, 1999, in Los Angeles. An unknown number of single prints also carry his signature, added on rare occasions after 1978. A standard impression of II.179 is signed by Warhol alone.

The catalogue number comes from Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne, first published in 1985 by Frayda Feldman and Jorg Schellmann while Warhol was still alive, and later revised in editions co-sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation.

From the camp to the auction room

II.179 trades rarely. One market tracker counts seven auction sales of the print since its first appearance in 2003, with hammer prices in the last five years ranging from GBP 61,980 in October 2022 to GBP 107,316 in October 2023.

The October 2023 sale, in New York, brought $165,100 including fees, a record for the print that nearly doubled the previous record, set in 2022.

In October 2026 an impression numbered 36/150 was scheduled to be offered at auction with an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000, in a sale opening October 8.

The paintings behind the prints sit in a different price bracket. In November 2019 the set of Athletes canvases kept by Weisman sold in New York as individual lots for a combined $15,014,000, and the Muhammad Ali canvas from that set sold for just over $10 million.

Athletes as the new movie stars

Warhol put it plainly: 'athletes are the new movie stars.' The Athletes series is now regarded as one of the standout bodies of work from his later years, and as a natural successor to his 1960s silkscreens of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.

Weisman, who died in 2018, came from a collecting family: his parents, Frederick and Marcia Weisman, were among the founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and appear in David Hockney's American Collectors, and his uncle was the industrialist Norton Simon.

Ali retired in 1981 and died on June 3, 2016. Warhol died in New York on February 22, 1987. The profile in II.179, coral pink and quiet, is a record of the one afternoon their two kinds of fame met.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint in colors on Strathmore Bristol paper

Dimensions

40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) per a dealer listing; sheet 40 x 30 1/8 in. (1018 x 766 mm) per a 2026 auction catalog

Catalogue raisonne

Feldman & Schellmann II.179 (portfolio II.179-182)

Edition

150, plus 10 artist's proofs; one dealer adds 1 printer's proof

Publisher

Andy Warhol Enterprises, Inc., New York

Current owner

Impressions are in private hands; no public collection holding is stated in the sources consulted

Timeline

1. Aug 6, 1928

   Andrew Warhola Jr., later Andy Warhol, is born in Pittsburgh.

2. Jan 17, 1942

   Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., later Muhammad Ali, is born.

3. 1972

   Ali begins training at his camp in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, where he prepares for every fight until 1981.

4. 1977

   Richard L. Weisman proposes the Athletes series to Warhol.

5. Mar 1977

   Warhol begins photographing athletes across the United States with a Polaroid Big Shot; the shoots run to November.

6. Aug 18, 1977

   Warhol photographs Ali at Deer Lake; Victor Bockris photographs the two together.

7. Feb 15, 1978

   Ali loses his heavyweight titles to Leon Spinks in Las Vegas.

8. 1978

   Andy Warhol Enterprises publishes the Muhammad Ali portfolio of four screenprints, II.179-182, in an edition of 150 plus 10 artist's proofs.

9. Sep 15, 1978

   Ali beats Spinks in New Orleans and becomes the first three-time heavyweight champion.

10. 1979

    Warhol and Weisman unveil the Athletes series in Columbus.

11. 1985

    The first edition of Warhol's prints catalogue raisonne by Feldman and Schellmann is published.

12. Feb 22, 1987

    Warhol dies in New York.

13. Jul 13, 1999

    Ali signs six complete Muhammad Ali portfolios in Los Angeles, according to his memorabilia agent.

14. 2003

    II.179 makes its first recorded auction appearance.

15. Jun 3, 2016

    Muhammad Ali dies.

16. Nov 2019

    Weisman's own set of Athletes paintings sells in New York for a combined $15,014,000; the Ali canvas brings just over $10 million.

17. Oct 2023

    An impression of II.179 sells at auction in New York for $165,100, a record for the print.

18. Oct 8, 2026

    Impression 36/150 is scheduled to be offered at auction with an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000.

The world in 1978

• Jan 15, 1978

  The Dallas Cowboys beat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XII.

• Feb 5, 1978

  A blizzard hits New England and the New York area over three days, killing about 100 people.

• Jun 6, 1978

  California voters approve Proposition 13, cutting property taxes by nearly 60 percent.

• Jun 16, 1978

  Grease, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, is released.

• Sep 17, 1978

  Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat begin the peace process at Camp David.

• Nov 18, 1978

  909 Americans die in the mass murder-suicide at Jonestown, Guyana.

• Nov 27, 1978

  San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Muhammad Ali (F. & S. II.179) is number 37 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (36 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• II.179 is the only print in the Ali portfolio that Warhol signed at lower left; the other three are signed at lower right.
• Ali did not sign the prints when they were published. His memorabilia agent says Ali signed just six complete portfolios, on July 13, 1999, in Los Angeles.
• Ali was the subject who unlocked the series: once he agreed to sit, Weisman said, 'everybody wanted to do it.'
• At the sitting Ali marveled that collectors would pay $25,000 for his picture when a few years earlier he 'couldn't buy a $1,500 motorcycle.'
• One account says Warhol shot 56 Polaroids of Ali and used only four for the portfolio.
• Warhol painted just eight sets of the Athletes portraits.