Yankee Andy's dandy doodles

Andy Warhol: Private Drawings From The 1950s

Andy Warhol's early work as New York's most successful commercial illustrator is well known after Tate Modern's retrospective last year.

Dating back to the same period, but less well-known, are the small, rapidly executed 'private' drawings lining the walls of Sadie Coles HQ.

Almost all are of anonymous young men, though many look like women.

Striking poses with cigarette holders, beaded jewellery and heavy earrings, with many images elliptically veering off the page, they capture a shimmering private world where homosexuality and transvestism are treated with an open, mischievous sense of fun.

Though described as ' portraits', it hardly matters who these individuals are, since the pictures are simple cartoon doodles - a sort of heavy-handed Matisse playfully revelling in an enjoyment of making pretty lines on paper, intent on capturing the pleasures of a baroque masque.

They demonstrate Warhol's gifts as a consummate graphic artist, drawn to the glamorous surface rather than the murky psychological depths of any serious study.

But even as caricatures, they are too vaguely drawn, lacking defining characteristics. Whatever we bring to them, it is only in the light of what we already know of one of the most documented artists of the 20th century.