1963
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : USA Warhol USA by Warhol Celebrities by Warhol Elvis and Liz Lichtenstein Bacon Bacon 1963-70 Head triptych Mountains in China Modern China
See also : USA Warhol USA by Warhol Celebrities by Warhol Elvis and Liz Lichtenstein Bacon Bacon 1963-70 Head triptych Mountains in China Modern China
1963 Car Crash by WARHOL
Intro
Andy Warhol achieves fame in 1962 by collecting and repeating images of consumer items and movie stars. The effect on his own psyche is negative : he keeps the impression of being alone in facing the risk of a sudden death. His daily practice of Catholicism will never allow him to overcome this morbid terror.
The American dream is not enough to express the world. Automobile is very popular in the USA, and a symbol of freedom. Car crash claims the death of more than 100 people per day. The readers of the newspapers do not feel concerned by the horrible news and illustrations from the disaster.
Andy reacts against this social issue that hurts his Catholic devotion. In 1963 he begins his Death and Disaster themes. He re-screens the images of the most terrible car accidents. The series also includes his blame against the electric chair. He would say much later: "Nobody in America has a normal life".
The American dream is not enough to express the world. Automobile is very popular in the USA, and a symbol of freedom. Car crash claims the death of more than 100 people per day. The readers of the newspapers do not feel concerned by the horrible news and illustrations from the disaster.
Andy reacts against this social issue that hurts his Catholic devotion. In 1963 he begins his Death and Disaster themes. He re-screens the images of the most terrible car accidents. The series also includes his blame against the electric chair. He would say much later: "Nobody in America has a normal life".
1
Silver Car Crash
2013 SOLD for $ 105M by Sotheby's
On November 13, 2013, Sotheby's sold for $ 105M from a lower estimate of $ 60M Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), a diptych 267 x 416 cm overall, lot 16.
On the left, the image is repeated fifteen times in three columns and five rows, with some variations in the shades of gray. On the right, the area is empty, as if the horrific scene had an extension inviting for the destruction of other lives and other cars. Warhol made a similar use of the diptych in some pictures of Liz.
The pale green of the Burning car and the apparent incompleteness of its sequence in the bottom right corner put this image in the direct continuity of the Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster).
Response by Grok :
Quote
ART FLAW @ART_FLAW Jan 30, 2024
| LES RECORDS DU MARCHÉ DE L'ART 30/31 | Andy Warhol, Silver Car Crash (double disaster), 1963. Adjugée pour 105,4 millions de dollars (frais compris) le 13 novembre 2013 par Sotheby’s New York. L’œuvre fut acquise anonymement. D'après les informations connues à ce jour
On the left, the image is repeated fifteen times in three columns and five rows, with some variations in the shades of gray. On the right, the area is empty, as if the horrific scene had an extension inviting for the destruction of other lives and other cars. Warhol made a similar use of the diptych in some pictures of Liz.
The pale green of the Burning car and the apparent incompleteness of its sequence in the bottom right corner put this image in the direct continuity of the Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster).
Response by Grok :
Quote
ART FLAW @ART_FLAW Jan 30, 2024
| LES RECORDS DU MARCHÉ DE L'ART 30/31 | Andy Warhol, Silver Car Crash (double disaster), 1963. Adjugée pour 105,4 millions de dollars (frais compris) le 13 novembre 2013 par Sotheby’s New York. L’œuvre fut acquise anonymement. D'après les informations connues à ce jour
- The artwork "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)" by Andy Warhol, sold for $105.4 million in 2013, reflects his 1963 Death and Disaster series, which used silkscreen techniques to replicate media images of car crashes, challenging societal desensitization to violence as documented in a 1962 study by sociologist David Altheide on media's role in normalizing death.
- Created at age 35, the piece’s massive 13-foot span and stark division between a chaotic crash image and a blank canvas symbolize the American Dream’s collapse, a theme supported by art historian Neil Printz’s analysis linking it to suburban nightmares, resonating with a 1960s rise in car accident deaths (over 50,000 annually in the U.S., per NHTSA data).
- Its anonymous 2013 Sotheby’s sale marks a pivotal moment in the art market, where post-1960s works began dominating high-value auctions, a shift noted in Artsy’s 2025 report on young collectors driving demand for provocative modern art, overturning the prior dominance of Old Masters.
2
White Disaster
2022 SOLD for $ 85M by Sotheby's
White Disaster, subtitled White Car Crash 19 Times, executed by Warhol in 1963, is unquestionably the culmination of his Car Crash sub-series and arguably the culmination of his Death and Disaster theme.
This work is monumental, 370 x 210 cm, requiring to be viewed from below. The next larger Car Crash items are the diptych Double Disaster (Silver Car Crash), 230 cm high with the right element left blank, sold for $ 105M by Sotheby's in 2013, and the 270 x 420 cm Orange Car Crash 19 Times kept at the MoMA.
White Disaster is made of a single image printed 19 times in 7 rows of 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3 in a chilling irregular contour. The frames in a row are slightly overlapping. They may have been variously contrasted.
Its single image displays a crushed car with a seated dead person viewed through the side door opened by the crash. Such a clearly outlined figure in a dead position within the car is rare in the rest of the series. The dead man of the Burning car sub-series had been ejected by that crash.
White Disaster is made in silkscreen ink and graphite on primed canvas with no color pigment. It is a difference with the Silver Car Crash prepared in silver spray paint. Some other works are orange or green.
White is the most terrible choice because it reminds a newspaper and because it is the race of the dead old person. Such a disaster was so common in the USA of the 1960s that the source of the image has not been retrieved.
White Disaster was sold for $ 85M by Sotheby's on November 16, 2022, lot 114.
Response by Grok 4 :
This work is monumental, 370 x 210 cm, requiring to be viewed from below. The next larger Car Crash items are the diptych Double Disaster (Silver Car Crash), 230 cm high with the right element left blank, sold for $ 105M by Sotheby's in 2013, and the 270 x 420 cm Orange Car Crash 19 Times kept at the MoMA.
White Disaster is made of a single image printed 19 times in 7 rows of 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3 in a chilling irregular contour. The frames in a row are slightly overlapping. They may have been variously contrasted.
Its single image displays a crushed car with a seated dead person viewed through the side door opened by the crash. Such a clearly outlined figure in a dead position within the car is rare in the rest of the series. The dead man of the Burning car sub-series had been ejected by that crash.
White Disaster is made in silkscreen ink and graphite on primed canvas with no color pigment. It is a difference with the Silver Car Crash prepared in silver spray paint. Some other works are orange or green.
White is the most terrible choice because it reminds a newspaper and because it is the race of the dead old person. Such a disaster was so common in the USA of the 1960s that the source of the image has not been retrieved.
White Disaster was sold for $ 85M by Sotheby's on November 16, 2022, lot 114.
Response by Grok 4 :
- The artwork "White Disaster [White Car Crash 19 Times]" by Andy Warhol, created in 1963 and sold for $85,350,500 at Sotheby's on November 16, 2022, represents a pivotal work in his Death and Disaster series, utilizing repetitive silkscreen imagery of a gruesome car crash to explore themes of mortality and media sensationalism in American culture.
- This sale highlights Warhol's enduring influence on the art market, where his works saw a remarkable appreciation; originally auctioned for $660,000 in 1987, it contributed to Sotheby's record-breaking 2022 contemporary art sales totaling over $314 million, driven by demand from international buyers and a resurgence in Pop Art interest.
- The piece's creation in 1963 coincided with Warhol's broader exploration of tragedy through appropriated news photographs, challenging viewers to confront desensitization to violence and disaster, a theme that has been analyzed for its psychological impact on perceptions of popular culture and its role in elevating tabloid imagery to fine art status.
3
Green Burning Car
2007 SOLD for $ 72M by Christie's
Warhol searches and finds in the newspapers the most horrible photos of car accidents. One of them is particularly atrocious. It shows an accident that just happened on a street in Seattle. Chased by the police, a car overturned and caught fire. The driver was thrown onto a stake, taking the position of a lynched man.
The worst element in this image is possibly not its violence. Just behind the dying man, a passerby quietly walks away, his hands in his pockets. Exploiting this indecency, Newsweek integrated this photo into an article on a social theme, in June 1963. We can imagine the horror that this image caused for the highly sensitive Andy.
Warhol used this specific photo four times in repeated screen prints on a white painted background and once on a gloomy pale green background. Green Car Crash, also named Green Burning Car I, is a 229 x 203 cm assembly of four columns and three rows of this image, with varied contrasts. The reading ends on the nothingness : the last block at the bottom right is blank.
Green Car Crash was sold for $ 72M by Christie's on May 16, 2007 from a lower estimate of $ 25M, lot 15.
Grok thought :
Quote
John @100anos_soledad Apr 17, 2018
Money laundering? Nah, just the end of humanity. This "wonderful" example fetched USD $73.7 million at Christie's, New York. It is pleasantly titled Green Car Crash by Andy Warhol. Go figure.
The worst element in this image is possibly not its violence. Just behind the dying man, a passerby quietly walks away, his hands in his pockets. Exploiting this indecency, Newsweek integrated this photo into an article on a social theme, in June 1963. We can imagine the horror that this image caused for the highly sensitive Andy.
Warhol used this specific photo four times in repeated screen prints on a white painted background and once on a gloomy pale green background. Green Car Crash, also named Green Burning Car I, is a 229 x 203 cm assembly of four columns and three rows of this image, with varied contrasts. The reading ends on the nothingness : the last block at the bottom right is blank.
Green Car Crash was sold for $ 72M by Christie's on May 16, 2007 from a lower estimate of $ 25M, lot 15.
Grok thought :
Quote
John @100anos_soledad Apr 17, 2018
Money laundering? Nah, just the end of humanity. This "wonderful" example fetched USD $73.7 million at Christie's, New York. It is pleasantly titled Green Car Crash by Andy Warhol. Go figure.
- The post mocks the $71.7 million 2007 Christie's sale of Andy Warhol's 1963 silkscreen "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)", portraying the price as absurd or potentially money laundering amid humanity's decline.
- Warhol's piece, part of his Death and Disaster series, repeats a news photo of a fiery car wreck to critique media's numb repetition of violence, with green hues evoking detachment.
- Such auctions highlight art's role as a wealth storage vehicle; a 2013 Warhol sale later surpassed this record, fueling debates on market speculation over cultural value.
1963 Elvis by WARHOL
1
Triple
2014 SOLD for $ 82M by Christie's
There is indeed a place for contemporary art in Los Angeles. In 1957 Walter Hopps founds the Ferus Gallery. Ferus is a word that sounds good and is easily spelled, like Kodak had been for Eastman. In New York around Castelli, Pop Art becomes the wonder of the time. Irving Blum joins Ferus and ensures from 1958 the link with the east coast.
In 1962 Blum exhibits at Ferus the complete series of 32 Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol. The introduction of mechanized techniques into a creative process is incongruous and even scandalous. The promises of sale are so low that Blum buys the full set. It has not been disjointed and is currently at the MoMA.
Blum perseveres. In 1963 Ferus again dedicates an exhibition to Warhol's series. The new theme is provided by the cinema, the specialty of Los Angeles : Warhol exhibits Elvis. There is no better candidate than the King of Rock and Roll to simulate the trepidation of the new generation.
In this exhibition all the images of Elvis Presley originate from a single 1960 newspaper clipping promoting a film titled Flaming Star. Featured as a cowboy, Elvis is standing full front, the gun in his right hand. This image is now identified as the Elvis - Ferus Type.
Andy made all these impressions on a silver paint which stages the screen of a movie theater. He prepares them as a single roll 2.08 m high. The images are irregularly spaced and sometimes overlapping. The artist sends the uncut roll to Ferus with the frames, with no other instruction than to make a tight arrangement of all this set, thus evoking the film strip or the movement. He is too busy to participate in the mounting and does not accept Blum's invitation.
22 Ferus Type paintings have survived, with single, double or multiple figures. On November 12, 2014, Christie's sold for $ 82M the Triple Elvis (Ferus Type), 208 x 173 cm, lot 9.
Such a multiple picture provides an illusion of motion. Although the original image is unique, its layout reminds Marey, Muybridge and the Nu descendant un escalier by Duchamp. The three overlapping figures are of equal density but the momentum is provided by their uneven interval.
This piece and the Four Marlons of the same sale came from a German collection assembled for decorating a casino.
Grok thought (two trials from the same tweet) :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc Nov 13, 2014
Andy #Warhol's Triple Elvis realizes $81,925,000 after 6 minutes of bidding
In 1962 Blum exhibits at Ferus the complete series of 32 Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol. The introduction of mechanized techniques into a creative process is incongruous and even scandalous. The promises of sale are so low that Blum buys the full set. It has not been disjointed and is currently at the MoMA.
Blum perseveres. In 1963 Ferus again dedicates an exhibition to Warhol's series. The new theme is provided by the cinema, the specialty of Los Angeles : Warhol exhibits Elvis. There is no better candidate than the King of Rock and Roll to simulate the trepidation of the new generation.
In this exhibition all the images of Elvis Presley originate from a single 1960 newspaper clipping promoting a film titled Flaming Star. Featured as a cowboy, Elvis is standing full front, the gun in his right hand. This image is now identified as the Elvis - Ferus Type.
Andy made all these impressions on a silver paint which stages the screen of a movie theater. He prepares them as a single roll 2.08 m high. The images are irregularly spaced and sometimes overlapping. The artist sends the uncut roll to Ferus with the frames, with no other instruction than to make a tight arrangement of all this set, thus evoking the film strip or the movement. He is too busy to participate in the mounting and does not accept Blum's invitation.
22 Ferus Type paintings have survived, with single, double or multiple figures. On November 12, 2014, Christie's sold for $ 82M the Triple Elvis (Ferus Type), 208 x 173 cm, lot 9.
Such a multiple picture provides an illusion of motion. Although the original image is unique, its layout reminds Marey, Muybridge and the Nu descendant un escalier by Duchamp. The three overlapping figures are of equal density but the momentum is provided by their uneven interval.
This piece and the Four Marlons of the same sale came from a German collection assembled for decorating a casino.
Grok thought (two trials from the same tweet) :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc Nov 13, 2014
Andy #Warhol's Triple Elvis realizes $81,925,000 after 6 minutes of bidding
- Christie's post celebrates the $81.9 million hammer price for Andy Warhol's 1963 silkscreen "Triple Elvis [Ferus Type]," a record for the artist at the time, achieved after intense six-minute bidding that surpassed $60 million estimates.
- The artwork depicts three overlaid images of Elvis Presley in a gunslinger pose from his 1960 film "Flaming Star," showcasing Warhol's silkscreen method to critique celebrity culture through mechanical repetition and silver-flecked tonality.
- Anchoring Christie's $853 million post-war and contemporary art sale—the highest ever then—this transaction reflected 2014's art market boom, driven by wealthy collectors seeking blue-chip Pop Art amid global economic rebound.
- The post highlights the 2014 auction of Andy Warhol's "Triple Elvis," a 1963 silkscreen painting that sold for $81.9 million in just six minutes, reflecting the artwork's iconic status derived from a publicity still of Elvis Presley from the film Flaming Star, a piece that exemplifies Warhol's critique of celebrity culture and mass production, as noted in art historical analyses from the Tate Museum.
- This sale underscores a broader trend in the art market where Pop Art pieces, particularly those by Warhol, have seen exponential value growth, with another version, "Eight Elvises," fetching $100 million in 2008, suggesting a speculative bubble driven by wealthy collectors, a phenomenon supported by economic studies like those in the Journal of Cultural Economics (2015) linking art prices to financial market cycles.
- The artwork's creation coincided with the peak of Elvis Presley's fame and the rise of Pop Art in the 1960s, a movement that challenged traditional art norms by embracing commercial imagery, as evidenced by the Independent Group's influence in Britain, offering a surprising contrast to the abstract expressionism dominant at the time.
2
Double
2019 SOLD for $ 53M by Christie's
A Double Elvis in a normally contrasted overlapping, 208 x 122 cm, was sold for $ 53M by Christie's on May 15, 2019, lot 23 B.
Another Double Elvis 208 x 122 cm deliberate displays an extreme difference of contrast between the two overlapping printings which creates an illusion of flicker. It was sold by Sotheby's on May 9, 2012 for $ 37M and by Christie's on May 17, 2018, lot 9 B, also for $ 37M.
An Elvis 2 Times 207 x 180 cm in silkscreen ink and paint was sold for $ 37M by Sotheby's on May 12, 2021, lot 4. The silver paint of the background provides a high reflectivity. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
Grok thought from an ArtHitParade tweet :
Another Double Elvis 208 x 122 cm deliberate displays an extreme difference of contrast between the two overlapping printings which creates an illusion of flicker. It was sold by Sotheby's on May 9, 2012 for $ 37M and by Christie's on May 17, 2018, lot 9 B, also for $ 37M.
An Elvis 2 Times 207 x 180 cm in silkscreen ink and paint was sold for $ 37M by Sotheby's on May 12, 2021, lot 4. The silver paint of the background provides a high reflectivity. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
Grok thought from an ArtHitParade tweet :
- This 2019 post by @ArtHitParade announces the $53 million sale of Andy Warhol's 1963 silkscreen "Double Elvis [Ferus Type]" at Christie's, featuring overlapping silver silhouettes of Elvis Presley as a gunslinger, underscoring Pop Art's celebrity obsession.
- The artwork, from Warhol's early silver Elvis series inspired by the 1960 film Flaming Star, sold below its $50-70 million estimate in Christie's May 15 auction, reflecting a softening market for high-end Warhols amid broader contemporary art sales totaling $407 million that night.
- As part of @ArtHitParade's focus on auction-driven art history, the post highlights how such sales—ranking sixth globally in 2019—perpetuate Elvis's icon status, with the piece's Ferus Gallery provenance linking it to Warhol's 1963 Los Angeles debut.
1963 Mona Lisa by Warhol
2015 SOLD for $ 56M by Christie's
Mona Lisa made a solemn visit to the United States in early 1963. The painting was received by the President and Mrs. Kennedy with the honors due to a queen. Its stay was managed in two steps: the National Gallery in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
This event is a triumph for culture and for trans-Atlantic friendship. Jacqueline Kennedy who thought and required this operation has a European sensibility and desires to fight America's reputation of cultural backwardness. André Malraux, French Minister of Culture, accepted the risk.
The American art is changing. Andy Warhol, like Norman Rockwell before him, is attentive to all symbols that can move the Americans. His technique of silkscreen art is developed. Executed in the previous year, the anaglyphic Statue of Liberty was already a synthesis of his blending of culture, politics and art.
A curator at the Metropolitan invited Warhol to interpret Mona Lisa. This approach is highly remarkable because Andy was still unknown two years earlier. It demonstrates the impulse and the need of the Americans to enter modern life during the Kennedy presidency.
Andy chooses three themes from a picture taken in a magazine: full image, bust and hands, and realizes the screens in several sizes. He mixes the screens in all orthogonal positions, even overlapping some of them, and separately uses with no addition the four basic colors of printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The famous Leonardo's picture confronts altogether the techniques and the disorders of the industrial civilization.
The largest multiple Mona Lisa realized by Warhol, 320 x 208 cm, was sold for $ 56M by Christie's on May 13, 2015, lot 26B.
Grok thought :
Quote
Super Grover @Super_Grover Nov 18, 2023
Replying to @MrSteveMatchett
Provided without comment.... Colored Mona Lisa (1963) by Andy Warhol. The painting sold for $56.2 million at Christie's in 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_Mona_Lisa…
This event is a triumph for culture and for trans-Atlantic friendship. Jacqueline Kennedy who thought and required this operation has a European sensibility and desires to fight America's reputation of cultural backwardness. André Malraux, French Minister of Culture, accepted the risk.
The American art is changing. Andy Warhol, like Norman Rockwell before him, is attentive to all symbols that can move the Americans. His technique of silkscreen art is developed. Executed in the previous year, the anaglyphic Statue of Liberty was already a synthesis of his blending of culture, politics and art.
A curator at the Metropolitan invited Warhol to interpret Mona Lisa. This approach is highly remarkable because Andy was still unknown two years earlier. It demonstrates the impulse and the need of the Americans to enter modern life during the Kennedy presidency.
Andy chooses three themes from a picture taken in a magazine: full image, bust and hands, and realizes the screens in several sizes. He mixes the screens in all orthogonal positions, even overlapping some of them, and separately uses with no addition the four basic colors of printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The famous Leonardo's picture confronts altogether the techniques and the disorders of the industrial civilization.
The largest multiple Mona Lisa realized by Warhol, 320 x 208 cm, was sold for $ 56M by Christie's on May 13, 2015, lot 26B.
Grok thought :
Quote
Super Grover @Super_Grover Nov 18, 2023
Replying to @MrSteveMatchett
Provided without comment.... Colored Mona Lisa (1963) by Andy Warhol. The painting sold for $56.2 million at Christie's in 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_Mona_Lisa…
- @Super_Grover's reply counters @MrSteveMatchett's metaphor defending George Orwell's unaltered 1984 against the 2023 novel "Julia" by Sandra Newman, which fleshes out the character Julia, by highlighting Andy Warhol's 1963 reinterpretation of the Mona Lisa as a valid artistic expansion.
- Warhol's "Colored Mona Lisa" uses silkscreen printing to repeat and colorize Leonardo da Vinci's original in a pop art style, transforming a singular Renaissance icon into a mass-produced, vibrant commentary on celebrity and reproduction.
- Auctioned for $56.2 million at Christie's in 2015, the work demonstrates that such additions to classics can gain widespread acclaim and immense value, challenging views of originals as untouchable.
1963 Woman with Flowered Hat by Lichtenstein
2013 SOLD for $ 56M by Christie's
In 1961, around Leo Castelli, the Abstract Expressionism is already going to saturation. New ideas were required. By exploring the pop art, Lichtenstein and Warhol demonstrated that despite Duchamp, despite the Surrealists, despite the Bauhaus, the modern imaging was still to be created.
Each one in his own way, these two competing artists designed images that the public can understand and love, inspired by consumerism, magazines, posters and comics.
From those early days, Roy Lichtenstein appropriates works of art. He wants to identify this action as a tribute to his predecessors, but his approach is too subtle for believing such a statement.
Picasso expressed deep feelings with a perfectly mastered drawing and adjusted colors. Lichtenstein's genius is to appreciate that Picasso's art is recognizable by the general public, but too complicated to retain. He plagiarizes it, bringing his personal techniques with colors alternately flat and by dots.
Dora Maar is the woman with flowered hat, painted by Picasso in 1939-1940. As Lichtenstein painted her in 1963, she had become pitiful to earn her place in the popular imaging.
The Lichtenstein canvas, 127 x 102 cm, is one of the most illustrative examples of Pop Art. It was sold for $ 56M from an estimate in excess of $ 30M by Christie's on May 15, 2013, lot 34.
Grok thought :
Quote
𝐸𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘣𝘦𝙩𝙝 ⁷ @AlwaysElizabeth Jun 18, 2024
"...the things that I have apparently parodied I actually admire" "...and the hair color to the yellow, since all my girls have yellow hair, almost all of them do" He gives life to Picasso's ill treatment of Dora. Woman With Flowered Hat Roy Lichtenstein 1963 ($56.1mill)
Each one in his own way, these two competing artists designed images that the public can understand and love, inspired by consumerism, magazines, posters and comics.
From those early days, Roy Lichtenstein appropriates works of art. He wants to identify this action as a tribute to his predecessors, but his approach is too subtle for believing such a statement.
Picasso expressed deep feelings with a perfectly mastered drawing and adjusted colors. Lichtenstein's genius is to appreciate that Picasso's art is recognizable by the general public, but too complicated to retain. He plagiarizes it, bringing his personal techniques with colors alternately flat and by dots.
Dora Maar is the woman with flowered hat, painted by Picasso in 1939-1940. As Lichtenstein painted her in 1963, she had become pitiful to earn her place in the popular imaging.
The Lichtenstein canvas, 127 x 102 cm, is one of the most illustrative examples of Pop Art. It was sold for $ 56M from an estimate in excess of $ 30M by Christie's on May 15, 2013, lot 34.
Grok thought :
Quote
𝐸𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘣𝘦𝙩𝙝 ⁷ @AlwaysElizabeth Jun 18, 2024
"...the things that I have apparently parodied I actually admire" "...and the hair color to the yellow, since all my girls have yellow hair, almost all of them do" He gives life to Picasso's ill treatment of Dora. Woman With Flowered Hat Roy Lichtenstein 1963 ($56.1mill)
- Roy Lichtenstein's 1963 "Woman with Flowered Hat" reinterprets Pablo Picasso's 1939 portrait of muse Dora Maar, transforming cubist distortions of their turbulent relationship into pop art's bold, comic-strip style with Ben-Day dots and primary colors.
- The post quotes Lichtenstein's reflections on parodying admired sources, noting his shift to yellow hair for consistency with his female figures, underscoring his ironic homage to modernist influences like Picasso.
- Auctioned for $56.1 million in 2013, the painting highlights pop art's fusion of highbrow critique and commercial appeal, reviving the emotional rawness of Picasso's "ill treatment" of Maar through accessible, mass-media visuals.
1963 BACON
1
Study for a Portrait of George Dyer
2017 SOLD for $ 52M by Christie's
At the turn of the 1960s the art world is demanding changes. Abstraction has taken up too much space and cancels the psychological observation. Francis Bacon then enjoys the top level of fame to such an extent that his sado-masochistic impulses are reversed : after Peter Lacy's death, Francis desires to dominate a young male muse.
George Dyer meets Francis's desire. His massive body evokes the masculine nudes sculpted by Michelangelo. His shabby life as a petty thief innocent of art excites Francis who creates the unverifiable story of their first encounter in 1963 during a burglary in his studio. Francis sometimes nicknames 'Sir George' this magnificent lover.
George has a weak personality that he vainly tries to offset by tobacco, drugs and alcohol. The colossus with feet of clay becomes for Francis a subject of study of the human contradictions. As ever Francis seeks through his models the mirror of his own complexity.
Francis grabs his brushes to exercise his new artistic quest. A homogeneous background enables to vary the expression. His very first study for a portrait of George is a triptych of 35 x 30 cm elements displaying the head in life size, painted in 1963.
That first triptych includes the distortions that erase the age of the sitter by demeaning the features of the face. It was sold for $ 52M by Christie's on May 17, 2017, lot 38 B.
Francis twists the nose and the cheeks and adds vivid colors to better reveal the tensions but the overall features remain perfectly superimposable to the photographs of George. On a black background and with no information on the garment, this triple head that comes out of the shadows with an empty gaze is one of the most profound testimonies by Bacon on the psychological misery of human beings.
The work's three oil-on-canvas panels (each 14x12 inches) depict Dyer's distorted face in raw flesh tones against black voids, drawing from John Deakin photographs to evoke emotional turmoil, a technique Bacon refined amid his rising fame in the early 1960s.
George Dyer's Influence on Francis Bacon
George Dyer (1934–1971), a former petty criminal from London's East End, met Francis Bacon in late 1963 (likely through mutual Soho circles, though myths of a burglary persist). Their relationship—intense, volatile, passionate, and often destructive—lasted until Dyer's suicide by overdose in a Paris hotel bathroom on October 30, 1971, just two days before the opening of Bacon's major retrospective at the Grand Palais. Dyer became Bacon's greatest muse, appearing in dozens of paintings (over 40 documented works feature him directly or indirectly), far more than any other sitter. His physical presence (muscular build, angular features, craggy profile) and emotional complexity profoundly shaped Bacon's art, amplifying themes of vulnerability, mortality, desire, brutality, and the fragility of the human body.
During Their Relationship (1963–1971)
George Dyer meets Francis's desire. His massive body evokes the masculine nudes sculpted by Michelangelo. His shabby life as a petty thief innocent of art excites Francis who creates the unverifiable story of their first encounter in 1963 during a burglary in his studio. Francis sometimes nicknames 'Sir George' this magnificent lover.
George has a weak personality that he vainly tries to offset by tobacco, drugs and alcohol. The colossus with feet of clay becomes for Francis a subject of study of the human contradictions. As ever Francis seeks through his models the mirror of his own complexity.
Francis grabs his brushes to exercise his new artistic quest. A homogeneous background enables to vary the expression. His very first study for a portrait of George is a triptych of 35 x 30 cm elements displaying the head in life size, painted in 1963.
That first triptych includes the distortions that erase the age of the sitter by demeaning the features of the face. It was sold for $ 52M by Christie's on May 17, 2017, lot 38 B.
Francis twists the nose and the cheeks and adds vivid colors to better reveal the tensions but the overall features remain perfectly superimposable to the photographs of George. On a black background and with no information on the garment, this triple head that comes out of the shadows with an empty gaze is one of the most profound testimonies by Bacon on the psychological misery of human beings.
The work's three oil-on-canvas panels (each 14x12 inches) depict Dyer's distorted face in raw flesh tones against black voids, drawing from John Deakin photographs to evoke emotional turmoil, a technique Bacon refined amid his rising fame in the early 1960s.
George Dyer's Influence on Francis Bacon
George Dyer (1934–1971), a former petty criminal from London's East End, met Francis Bacon in late 1963 (likely through mutual Soho circles, though myths of a burglary persist). Their relationship—intense, volatile, passionate, and often destructive—lasted until Dyer's suicide by overdose in a Paris hotel bathroom on October 30, 1971, just two days before the opening of Bacon's major retrospective at the Grand Palais. Dyer became Bacon's greatest muse, appearing in dozens of paintings (over 40 documented works feature him directly or indirectly), far more than any other sitter. His physical presence (muscular build, angular features, craggy profile) and emotional complexity profoundly shaped Bacon's art, amplifying themes of vulnerability, mortality, desire, brutality, and the fragility of the human body.
During Their Relationship (1963–1971)
- Muse and Subject: Dyer provided Bacon with an ideal model for exploring raw human existence. Bacon painted him obsessively in single panels, diptychs, and triptychs, often using John Deakin's photographs as source material. Key early works include Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer (1963), initiating a cycle of monumental portraits from 1966–1968 (e.g., Portrait of George Dyer Riding a Bicycle 1966, Portrait of George Dyer Staring into a Mirror 1967). These depict Dyer as virile yet tormented—brooding, heroic, vulnerable—blending tenderness with distortion. Dyer's body became a vehicle for Bacon's fascination with flesh as material: twisted sinew, exposed muscle, screaming mouths, evoking existential anguish and erotic tension.
- Emotional Catalyst: The relationship's turbulence (alcohol-fueled arguments, Dyer's growing isolation and dependence) fueled Bacon's "brutality of fact." Dyer embodied contradictions—tough yet fragile, debonair yet self-destructive—mirroring Bacon's own masochistic tendencies and interest in human suffering. Works like Portrait of George Dyer in a Mirror (1968) use reflection to symbolize duality: strength intertwined with a "death wish."
- Stylistic Impact: Dyer's recurring presence intensified Bacon's head studies and full-figure distortions, shifting from earlier friends (e.g., Lucian Freud, Isabel Rawsthorne) toward more personal, obsessive serial portrayals.
2
1963 Henrietta Moraes
2015 SOLD for $ 48M by Christie's
A portrait of Henrietta Moraes by Francis Bacon was sold by Christie's for £ 21.3M on February 14, 2012 and for $ 48M on May 13, 2015, lot 23B.
They were not only boys in Soho drinking clubs. Francis Bacon looks at the girls although he is not sexually concerned with them.
They do not sit in his studio. He requires the photos by John Deakin to prepare the paintings of these friends but it is his usual practice for males or females, in close up faces or full length in the nude.
His two muses are Muriel Belcher and Henrietta Moraes. A painting made in 1961, showing one of them or a mixing of both, was sold for £ 8.3M by Sotheby's on 29 June 2011. That woman looked like a crouching piece of meat.
The figure of Henrietta coming for sale is an oil on canvas 165 x 142 cm painted in 1963. Perhaps in an effort to appreciate heterosexuality, the artist displays the woman naked on a bed with a pillow.
Henrietta, 33 years old, is not a monster. Francis appreciated that fact and this painting in lavish colors is a rare example of female eroticism in his art.
Grok thought from an ArtHitParade tweet :
They were not only boys in Soho drinking clubs. Francis Bacon looks at the girls although he is not sexually concerned with them.
They do not sit in his studio. He requires the photos by John Deakin to prepare the paintings of these friends but it is his usual practice for males or females, in close up faces or full length in the nude.
His two muses are Muriel Belcher and Henrietta Moraes. A painting made in 1961, showing one of them or a mixing of both, was sold for £ 8.3M by Sotheby's on 29 June 2011. That woman looked like a crouching piece of meat.
The figure of Henrietta coming for sale is an oil on canvas 165 x 142 cm painted in 1963. Perhaps in an effort to appreciate heterosexuality, the artist displays the woman naked on a bed with a pillow.
Henrietta, 33 years old, is not a monster. Francis appreciated that fact and this painting in lavish colors is a rare example of female eroticism in his art.
Grok thought from an ArtHitParade tweet :
- This 2015 X post by @ArtHitParade reports the $47.8 million sale of Francis Bacon's 1963 oil painting Portrait of Henrietta Moraes at Christie's New York, highlighting the artwork's rapid value appreciation from its prior £21.3 million auction in 2012.
- The canvas depicts Bacon's muse Henrietta Moraes, a bohemian socialite and model also painted by Lucian Freud, in a rare, sensual female nude rendered from a John Deakin photograph, with distorted features and swirling brushstrokes evoking movement against a lilac-red ground.
- Bacon produced few female figures, making this seductive, odalisque-like portrayal exceptional in his oeuvre, which typically focused on male subjects and existential distortion, contributing to its status as a market standout for post-war British art.
1963 Infinite Scenery by Pan Tianshou
2018 SOLD for RMB 290M by China Guardian
Pan Tianshou spent his entire career teaching art. Specialist in ancient Chinese painting, he was director of the National Academy from 1945 to 1947 and then from 1957 until his public humiliation by the Red Guards in 1966.
Since the 1920s, he developed an innovative technique of painting with his fingers to create a wash, which he completes with a brush for a great boldness in the distribution of details. The artist enters his paper placed on the ground to produce works of very large format.
His drawings have an extremely expressive jerky line. For landscapes, he is the painter of summits, with pines shaken by the wind and eagles and crows proud of their domination.
On November 24, 2018, China Guardian sold for RMB 290M a very high hanging scroll, 360 x 150 cm, made in 1963 by Pan Tianshou in ink and color on paper. Three titles have been proposed : Infinite scenery, Infinite scenery in dangerous peaks, View from the peak.
The composition includes a foreground with a shrub and a series of rocks that lead to the summit. The view is free towards another mountain of which only the upper part has been drawn, the impression of a majestic height being accentuated by the center of the image which is left blank.
Realized in 1958 with the same technique and an equally spectacular composition, a horizontal scroll 140 x 364 cm titled Pine after rain was sold for RMB 206M by China Guardian on November 20, 2019.
Grok thought :
Quote
Art Market Journal @Art_Market_J Dec 23, 2018
无限风光 Chinese landscape painting by Pan Tianshou sold for nearly 300 million RMB at China Guardian auction house. It is the most expensive Chinese painting sold through auction this year. #auction #Chinesepainting
Since the 1920s, he developed an innovative technique of painting with his fingers to create a wash, which he completes with a brush for a great boldness in the distribution of details. The artist enters his paper placed on the ground to produce works of very large format.
His drawings have an extremely expressive jerky line. For landscapes, he is the painter of summits, with pines shaken by the wind and eagles and crows proud of their domination.
On November 24, 2018, China Guardian sold for RMB 290M a very high hanging scroll, 360 x 150 cm, made in 1963 by Pan Tianshou in ink and color on paper. Three titles have been proposed : Infinite scenery, Infinite scenery in dangerous peaks, View from the peak.
The composition includes a foreground with a shrub and a series of rocks that lead to the summit. The view is free towards another mountain of which only the upper part has been drawn, the impression of a majestic height being accentuated by the center of the image which is left blank.
Realized in 1958 with the same technique and an equally spectacular composition, a horizontal scroll 140 x 364 cm titled Pine after rain was sold for RMB 206M by China Guardian on November 20, 2019.
Grok thought :
Quote
Art Market Journal @Art_Market_J Dec 23, 2018
无限风光 Chinese landscape painting by Pan Tianshou sold for nearly 300 million RMB at China Guardian auction house. It is the most expensive Chinese painting sold through auction this year. #auction #Chinesepainting
- The post highlights the November 2018 auction sale of Pan Tianshou's 1963 ink-on-paper landscape "无限风光" (View from the Peak) for 287.5 million RMB ($41.4 million USD) at China Guardian, accompanied by an image of mist-shrouded mountains, gnarled pines, and a distant pavilion.
- Pan Tianshou, a pioneering modern Chinese painter and former president of the China National Academy of Fine Arts, blended traditional gongbi precision with xieyi expressiveness, elevating his late-career works like this one to icons of cultural revival post-Cultural Revolution.
- As the priciest Chinese painting sold at auction in 2018, the sale underscores the era's surge in domestic collector enthusiasm for 20th-century masters, building on Tianshou's prior records of 279 million RMB in 2015 and 345 million RMB in 2017.
