As early as his comic strip and Campbell's Soup-can paintings of the early 1960s, Warhol exhibited an unerring sense for the powerful motifs of his time -- contemporary images that captured the modern imagination as completely as the gods and goddesses of ancient mythology once did. Interestingly, in choosing Myths as the title of his 1981 portfolio of 10 screen prints, Warhol was referring not to remote civilizations, but to the beginnings of the cinema and the imaginary characters loved and recognized by millions all over the world.

Most images in Warhol's Myths Series are taken from old Hollywood films or 1950s television. The majority of them are fantasy characters from childhood and, typical of Warhol, they are all American or Americanized subjects. With his Myths Series, he portrayed nothing less than the universal view of America's once enchanted and powerful past. From the outset, Warhol was working from an understanding of the degree to which images are bound by context. He understood that they are what they are, because of where they are, who made them and how their virtues are described in language.

Included in the Myths Series are: characters loved by children, such as Mickey Mouse, (Warhol's acknowledged model of the universally famous person he wished to become), Howdy Doody, (a happy-go-lucky ventriloquist's dummy who had his own television show during the 1950s), and Santa Claus, the bearded figure eagerly awaited by children at Christmas time. The only real person depicted in the series is Warhol himself, posing as The Shadow, a mysterious figure with sinister overtones. In a sense, the Myths Series characters all represent facets of Warhol who was known affectionately by his friends as Drella: part Dracula, part Cinderella.

In creating the Myths Series in 1981, Warhol revived the type of subject matter he used during the 1960s -- appropriated images from mass media as manifestations of American cultural values. Interestingly, for many of the images, including Uncle Sam and Santa Claus, the artist photographed models dressed-up as the Myths Series personalities. By using his personal photographs, Warhol was ablt not only to arrange the figures as he wished, but also to avoid some major copyright problems.