It was 1953 when, not long after arriving in New York City, a young artist named Andy Warhol had begun to make his way in the world of commercial illustration. As Arthur Edelman, his former employer, relates in his introductory note, "In a hallway of the Empire State Building, outside a shoe manufacturer's office, stood a young man with Jackson Pollock shoes, a rumpled black suit, a portfolio, and a shock of white hair. Over the next decade,...