“Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist.”

Andy Warhol recognized the undercurrent of business running through the New York art world long before his contemporaries. Even as the banner of Abstract Expressionism was raised high by artists and the US establishment alike, Warhol envisioned a cool, detached idiom wholly alien to the passionate spontaneity of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman. In 1957, less than a year after Pollock’s death, Warhol incorporated Andy Warhol Enterprises, Inc., and went on to single-handedly create an artistic philosophy that would influence generations of “business artists.”

In an unsurprising twist of fate, Warhol’s work – which started as designs for commercial ads – have come full circle and are now widely licensed for use on clothing lines, perfume bottles, and even (again unsurprisingly) Campbell’s soup cans. All intellectual property related to Warhol’s life and work are exclusively owned by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., a New York non-profit created soon after Warhol’s death in 1987.

The Foundation is an atypical non-profit. According to the Economic Research Institute, it holds over $170 million in assets, mostly Warhol’s donated works. It has generated more than $16 million in revenues since it was formed, both through sales and licensing agreements. And for a charitable organization, it pays pretty well – the president and CFO pulled down more than $200,000 in 2007, while Warhol’s brother John netted $67,390 for 20 hours of work per week.

That a corporation founded according to the will of the most business-savvy artist of the 20^th century functions like a big business is no surprise. The fact that the Warhol Foundation seems to operate as a classic monopoly, however, has raised suspicion. In 1995, Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, Inc. was founded as a non-profit corporation holding the exclusive authority to determine the authenticity of any work attributed to Warhol. Leaving aside the abstract question of how “authenticity” can be applied to an artist who raised serial screen-printing to the level of a high art medium, the corporate connection between the legal owner of Warhol’s visual legacy and the ultimate authority on all existing Warhol pieces precipitated a year-long investigation by the New York attorney general.

Though the investigation found no wrong-doing, the issue is not publicly resolved. In 2007, filmmaker Joe Simon-Whelan filed a class action suit against both corporations, claiming they comprise a malicious “Warhol conspiracy” that colludes to control the market supply of Warhol’s art. (Learn more about Whalen’s campaign here.)

Key takeaway: art is business. In some cases, a very high-margin business. Warhol’s silkscreen of 200 dollar bills was recently auctioned for $43.8 million, demonstrating that an artist (or an artist’s posthumous corporate extension) can literally print money.