Rare Digital Portrait by Andy Warhol for Sale for $26 Million

In 1985, Commodore announced the Amiga 1000 computer and, at a public launch event, brought Andy Warhol in to create a digital portrait of Blondie’s Debbie Harry. That image was believed lost but has been in the possession of an original Commodore digital technician who is now making it available to purchase for $26 million.

Harry tells Artlyst that she believed only two copies of the digital portrait existed, one of which she owned. The other has now been revealed to have been in the possession of Jeff Bruette, a Commodore digital tech who assisted Warhol during the creation of the digital portrait for the promotional event, as seen below in an archival video of the launch from ABC News.

“I was there to help Andy with the technical aspect of things during that interview,” Bruette tells Artnet. “A number of images were created. Some appeared in the magazine at the time and one was used for the cover. I don’t have the cover images; I have the raw images and colorization that Andy did when trying to design what might be on the cover.”

The portrait is based on a photo and was altered using the Commodore Amiga 1000, as shown in some of archival footage of the shoot that will be included in the sale and was seen by PetaPixel.

After seeing the rise of digital art in recent years, decided it was time “for the world to experience it as it was meant to be.” That rise in popularity is a reference to NFTs which boomed a few years ago — Artlyst notes five NFTs created from restored Amiga images brought in $3.38 million at a Christie’s auction in 2021. Bruette likely hopes the combination digital art with Warhol’s name will tap into an even wider market.

Warhol signed the diskette that contains the artwork at Bruette’s request and while he offered it to Warhol, the artist told Bruette to keep it for himself. He later obtained a physical print of the portrait in the early 1990s as Commodore was in the midst of financial collapse, taking it from an executive who was cleaning out her office and who offered it to Bruette.

Bruette is selling the portrait on the original Amiga disk privately. The disk not only contains the portrait of Debbie Harry but also other images created during an interview with Amiga World magazine as well as another from the MTV show “Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes,” adding more context to the $26 million asking price.

In total, the sale will include four photographs from the Amiga event, a second 3.5-inch diskette containing an additional eight digital image files created by Warhol during the Amiga World interview session, a 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 drive with backup copies of all digital image files, an Amiga 1000 computer that lets the buyer view the images on the diskette, and a host of press materials associated with the launch event.

Image credits: Photographs and images provided courtesy of Jeff Bruette