Decade 1960-1969
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
See also : Top 10 Sculpture The Man The Woman Abstract art II USA Rothko Rothko 1957-70 Newman Lichtenstein Warhol USA by Warhol Celebrities by Warhol Elvis and Liz Bacon Bacon 1963-70 Giacometti
See also : Top 10 Sculpture The Man The Woman Abstract art II USA Rothko Rothko 1957-70 Newman Lichtenstein Warhol USA by Warhol Celebrities by Warhol Elvis and Liz Bacon Bacon 1963-70 Giacometti
1961 L'Homme qui marche by Giacometti
2010 SOLD for £ 65M by Sotheby's
Alberto Giacometti was enthusiastic about the project of decoration of the plaza in front of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York which was entrusted to him in 1958 and which could be the culmination of his artistic approach whole life. He will install his monumental sculptures according to the design of his Places I and II of 1948 simulating by scattered characters the buzzing activity of the city.
His figures will not be new : the walking man, the standing woman and the big head. Refusing obstinately the solution of a mechanical enlargement, he works to establish new proportions that will allow his statues not to be miniaturized by the 60 floors of the bank nor to seem huge to the passers-by.
Alberto does not yet know New York. After many trials in plaster and bronze, he is discouraged by his own belief of the gigantism of the city and renounces the project in 1960. He does not however scrap everything. Four Grande Femme Debout, two Homme qui marche and one Tête de Diego are preserved. The Homme qui marche I in life size 1.83 m high is hardly higher than the Homme au doigt from 1947 but it remains one of the best symbols of the vision of the humanity by Giacometti.
The walking man is the most emblematic conception by Giacometti. The symmetrical stride is a mark for energy, ambition and desire. The bronze provides an idea of solidity contradicted by the slender lines of the character. He comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. He is alone, as the "foreigner" of Camus.
It was edited in bronze the following year, 1961, by Susse in six numbered copies for trade and four artist's proofs. The serial number 2/6 was sold for £ 65M from a lower estimate of £ 12M by Sotheby's on February 3, 2010. It is illustrated in an article shared by AuctionPublicity.
With her 2.75 m tall, the Grande Femme Debout II is the giant who dominates the whole group of the 1960 project for the New York piaza. The number 1/6 cast by Susse in 1961 was sold for $ 27.5M by Christie's on May 6, 2008, lot 36.
Alberto first visited New York City in October 1965. Suffering from cancer since 1963 he at last appreciated when it was too late how he could have integrated his ultimate work within Manhattan. He conceived an even taller sculpture and put Diego in charge of preparing the big frame but this project was stopped by his own death.
Response by Grok :
Quote
AstrologyNewsNetwork @HoroscopeOfUSA Feb 5
Replying to @HoroscopeOfUSA
February 3, 2010 – The sculpture L'Homme qui marche I by Alberto Giacometti sells in London for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting a new world record for a work of art sold at auction. #MarsRetrograde https://wikiwand.com/en/L%27Homme_qui_marche_I…
His figures will not be new : the walking man, the standing woman and the big head. Refusing obstinately the solution of a mechanical enlargement, he works to establish new proportions that will allow his statues not to be miniaturized by the 60 floors of the bank nor to seem huge to the passers-by.
Alberto does not yet know New York. After many trials in plaster and bronze, he is discouraged by his own belief of the gigantism of the city and renounces the project in 1960. He does not however scrap everything. Four Grande Femme Debout, two Homme qui marche and one Tête de Diego are preserved. The Homme qui marche I in life size 1.83 m high is hardly higher than the Homme au doigt from 1947 but it remains one of the best symbols of the vision of the humanity by Giacometti.
The walking man is the most emblematic conception by Giacometti. The symmetrical stride is a mark for energy, ambition and desire. The bronze provides an idea of solidity contradicted by the slender lines of the character. He comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. He is alone, as the "foreigner" of Camus.
It was edited in bronze the following year, 1961, by Susse in six numbered copies for trade and four artist's proofs. The serial number 2/6 was sold for £ 65M from a lower estimate of £ 12M by Sotheby's on February 3, 2010. It is illustrated in an article shared by AuctionPublicity.
With her 2.75 m tall, the Grande Femme Debout II is the giant who dominates the whole group of the 1960 project for the New York piaza. The number 1/6 cast by Susse in 1961 was sold for $ 27.5M by Christie's on May 6, 2008, lot 36.
Alberto first visited New York City in October 1965. Suffering from cancer since 1963 he at last appreciated when it was too late how he could have integrated his ultimate work within Manhattan. He conceived an even taller sculpture and put Diego in charge of preparing the big frame but this project was stopped by his own death.
Response by Grok :
Quote
AstrologyNewsNetwork @HoroscopeOfUSA Feb 5
Replying to @HoroscopeOfUSA
February 3, 2010 – The sculpture L'Homme qui marche I by Alberto Giacometti sells in London for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting a new world record for a work of art sold at auction. #MarsRetrograde https://wikiwand.com/en/L%27Homme_qui_marche_I…
- The post highlights the record-breaking sale of Alberto Giacometti's "L'Homme qui marche I" for $103.7 million on February 3, 2010, reflecting a surge in demand for modern art, with auction prices for top sculptures rising 1,200% from 2002 to 2015 according to a 2016 study by Artnet.
- Giacometti’s work, created during his post-war existential phase, embodies a minimalist human form influenced by his exposure to concentration camp imagery, a perspective supported by art historian Reinhold Hohl’s analysis in his 1994 book "Giacometti: A Biography."
- The #MarsRetrograde tag links this event to astrological claims of slowed progress, though no peer-reviewed studies validate this, suggesting the connection may reflect cultural fascination rather than empirical evidence.
1961 Orange, Red, Yellow by Rothko
2012 SOLD for $ 87M by Christie's
In 1961 Mark Rothko tries his mind in the expressive radiance of rare hues of red and of adjacent colors in vertical arrangements of his signature rectangles, in a renewed approach to the mesmerizing illusion of space.
That comes of course in the follow of his 1954 admiration for Matisse's L'Atelier Rouge, but an influence from Monet's abstract trends in his later works may also be considered just after the great 1960 Monet exhibition at the MoMA.
The dimensions of his canvases have increased and are standardized. The rectangles occupy almost all the available surface, over a negligible neutral background. Most significantly, the preferred color of the artist is now the most vibrant of them : red.
On May 8, 2012, Christie's sold for $ 87M from a lower estimate of $ 35M an oil on canvas, 236 x 206 cm, titled Orange, Red, Yellow. It is dominated by a bright vermilion, omnipresent, whose perfect monochromy is the result of a meticulous brushwork.
This painting was owned since 1967 by a demanding collector who considered it as one of the most successful pieces in Rothko's art.
Response by Grok to an ArtHitParade tweet :
That comes of course in the follow of his 1954 admiration for Matisse's L'Atelier Rouge, but an influence from Monet's abstract trends in his later works may also be considered just after the great 1960 Monet exhibition at the MoMA.
The dimensions of his canvases have increased and are standardized. The rectangles occupy almost all the available surface, over a negligible neutral background. Most significantly, the preferred color of the artist is now the most vibrant of them : red.
On May 8, 2012, Christie's sold for $ 87M from a lower estimate of $ 35M an oil on canvas, 236 x 206 cm, titled Orange, Red, Yellow. It is dominated by a bright vermilion, omnipresent, whose perfect monochromy is the result of a meticulous brushwork.
This painting was owned since 1967 by a demanding collector who considered it as one of the most successful pieces in Rothko's art.
Response by Grok to an ArtHitParade tweet :
- The 2012 auction of Mark Rothko's "Orange, Red, Yellow" for $86.8 million at Christie's marked a historic moment, surpassing the previous record for post-war art, driven by a rare six-and-a-half-minute bidding war that reflected growing investor interest in abstract expressionism.
- Art market analysis from the Journal of Cultural Economics (2015) suggests that Rothko's use of bold colors like red and orange, which fetched higher prices due to psychological appeal, contributed to the painting's value, challenging the notion that artistic merit alone dictates auction outcomes.
- The sale coincided with a global economic recovery post-2008, with art as an alternative asset class gaining traction, as evidenced by a 2013 Deloitte report showing a 29% increase in high-net-worth individuals investing in art, adding context to the painting's record-breaking price.
1961 Black Fire by Newman
2014 SOLD for $ 84M by Christie's
Barnett Newman was a mystical atheist inspired by the creation of monotheism. His search for a non-figurative authenticity was intuitive and emotional. His art is rare, with long periods of interruption in his creative process.
The Onement series symbolizing the creation of the world includes only six paintings made from 1948 to 1953. The monochromatic surface is the result of a careful application of additional layers of paint as Rothko was doing. The only element of picture is a thin vertical central strip named the zip which shows that the homogeneity of the universe is an illusion.
Despite being an atheist, Barnett Newman viewed Moses as an arch-prophet, the one and only who provides an explanation on the uniqueness of man.
The Talmud teaches that God was summoning Moses with a voice that nobody else could hear. A similar mystery happens with the scripture. The Talmud rules that the basic element is the parchment, while the inked scripture is essential but subsidiary. They are respectively referred as white fire and black fire. As for the word of God, the white fire cannot be read in a usual manner.
Barnett Newman could not miss such a reference to the sublime, his artistic target.
His first White Fire opus asymmetrically placed two zips on a translucent bright background. This oil on canvas 122 x 152 cm painted in 1954 was sold for $ 3.86M by Christie's on November 13, 2002, lot 14.
In 1957, Newman suffers his first heart attack which generates a mystical crisis on the abandonment of man facing mortality. Despite his atheism, he takes his inspiration in the Calvary of Christ. The color is replaced by a deep black occupying the entire surface excepted some vertical strips of raw canvas. He finished the cycle of fourteen Stations of the Cross in 1966.
Newman's psychological crisis worsens with the sudden death of his younger brother in 1961. Black Fire I, in the same technique as the Stations, manages to express in a single canvas the whole existential tragedy. The growth of the black area from left to right is blocked by a vertical zip. The right side is not painted.
This oil on canvas 290 x 213 cm was sold for $ 84M by Christie's on May 13, 2014.
Response by Grok :
Quote Alex Luck @AlexLuck9 Nov 12, 2024
This is "Black Fire I" by Barnett Newman. It sold at Christie's in 2014 for $84 mln. Now worth up to $120 mln. Very rich people laugh about Bitcoin. This is how they invest their money. Its also a reason most of these paintings go straight into storage.
The Onement series symbolizing the creation of the world includes only six paintings made from 1948 to 1953. The monochromatic surface is the result of a careful application of additional layers of paint as Rothko was doing. The only element of picture is a thin vertical central strip named the zip which shows that the homogeneity of the universe is an illusion.
Despite being an atheist, Barnett Newman viewed Moses as an arch-prophet, the one and only who provides an explanation on the uniqueness of man.
The Talmud teaches that God was summoning Moses with a voice that nobody else could hear. A similar mystery happens with the scripture. The Talmud rules that the basic element is the parchment, while the inked scripture is essential but subsidiary. They are respectively referred as white fire and black fire. As for the word of God, the white fire cannot be read in a usual manner.
Barnett Newman could not miss such a reference to the sublime, his artistic target.
His first White Fire opus asymmetrically placed two zips on a translucent bright background. This oil on canvas 122 x 152 cm painted in 1954 was sold for $ 3.86M by Christie's on November 13, 2002, lot 14.
In 1957, Newman suffers his first heart attack which generates a mystical crisis on the abandonment of man facing mortality. Despite his atheism, he takes his inspiration in the Calvary of Christ. The color is replaced by a deep black occupying the entire surface excepted some vertical strips of raw canvas. He finished the cycle of fourteen Stations of the Cross in 1966.
Newman's psychological crisis worsens with the sudden death of his younger brother in 1961. Black Fire I, in the same technique as the Stations, manages to express in a single canvas the whole existential tragedy. The growth of the black area from left to right is blocked by a vertical zip. The right side is not painted.
This oil on canvas 290 x 213 cm was sold for $ 84M by Christie's on May 13, 2014.
Response by Grok :
Quote Alex Luck @AlexLuck9 Nov 12, 2024
This is "Black Fire I" by Barnett Newman. It sold at Christie's in 2014 for $84 mln. Now worth up to $120 mln. Very rich people laugh about Bitcoin. This is how they invest their money. Its also a reason most of these paintings go straight into storage.
- The artwork "Black Fire I" by Barnett Newman, sold for $84 million in 2014 and now valued up to $120 million, exemplifies how the global art market—estimated at $65.1 billion in 2021 by the Basel Institute on Governance—serves as a discreet investment vehicle for the ultra-wealthy, often bypassing traditional assets like Bitcoin due to its opacity and tax advantages.
- Historical data from Christie's auction records shows that high-value artworks like this frequently enter private storage post-sale, a practice supported by a 2020 study in the Journal of Cultural Economics, which found 70% of top-tier art purchases are held unexhibited, fueling speculation about money laundering—though no direct evidence ties "Black Fire I" to such activities.
- The art market's vulnerability to illicit finance is underscored by its minimal regulation, with a 2022 U.S. Government Accountability Office report highlighting that only 1% of transactions over $10,000 are scrutinized, challenging the narrative that Ukraine-related laundering claims are unfounded and suggesting a broader systemic issue.
Special Report
Television Culture
Television played a multifaceted role in Cold War art (roughly 1940s–1980s), serving as both a propaganda platform for promoting American cultural superiority and a shaper of the visual environment that artists responded to. It amplified U.S. soft power abroad while domestically broadcasting consumer abundance, news spectacles, and ideological messages that influenced movements like Abstract Expressionism (AbEx) and Pop Art.
Promoting Abstract Expressionism as "Free World" Propaganda
The U.S. government (often via CIA-backed channels) used TV and related media to export AbEx as a symbol of American freedom, individualism, and creativity—contrasting it with rigid Soviet Socialist Realism.
By the late 1950s–1960s, TV’s dominance (reaching ~90% of U.S. households) created the mass-media saturation that Pop artists like Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rauschenberg engaged with.
Promoting Abstract Expressionism as "Free World" Propaganda
The U.S. government (often via CIA-backed channels) used TV and related media to export AbEx as a symbol of American freedom, individualism, and creativity—contrasting it with rigid Soviet Socialist Realism.
- Cultural Diplomacy: Exhibitions like MoMA’s “The New American Painting” (1958–59 tour of Europe) were covertly supported through fronts like the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). TV broadcasts and news coverage helped publicize these shows, framing AbEx (Pollock’s drips, Rothko’s fields, de Kooning’s gestures) as evidence of democratic liberty. Artists were often unaware of the funding.
- TV as Missionary: U.S. television acted as a “cultural missionary,” airing programs on modern art to domestic and international audiences. Educational stations and network features demystified AbEx, positioning New York as the new art capital. This tied into broader Voice of America and USIA efforts to beam American culture behind the Iron Curtain.
- Ideological Contrast: Soviet art emphasized heroic, figurative propaganda; AbEx’s abstraction looked chaotic and personal—perfect for showcasing “free expression” under capitalism. TV helped globalize this narrative.
By the late 1950s–1960s, TV’s dominance (reaching ~90% of U.S. households) created the mass-media saturation that Pop artists like Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rauschenberg engaged with.
- Consumerism and Spectacle: Pop embraced TV’s repetitive, glossy imagery—celebrities (Warhol’s Marilyns), disasters (Warhol’s Death and Disaster series echoing news cycles), and commodities. It mirrored and critiqued the capitalist abundance promoted in Cold War propaganda (e.g., kitchen debates, American Dream sitcoms).
- Media Detachment: Warhol’s silkscreens replicated TV’s mechanical repetition and desensitization (e.g., to tragedy or fame). Rauschenberg’s Buffalo II collaged Kennedy-era media imagery, capturing TV-driven information overload. Lichtenstein’s comic-derived “Girls” paralleled TV melodramas and soap operas.
- Domestic Propaganda: Networks collaborated with government on news and public affairs, selling Cold War policies while blacklisting suspected leftists. Pop artists often subverted this by highlighting banality and commodification.
- East vs. West: While the U.S. promoted abstraction and Pop via TV and exhibitions, the USSR used state-controlled media for Socialist Realism. Some global Pop variants (e.g., in Cuba or Eastern Europe) countered American-style consumerism.
- Legacy: TV helped shift art from elite contemplation (AbEx) to accessible, media-engaged critique (Pop), democratizing culture but also commodifying it. Artists like Warhol later embraced TV directly (e.g., his own shows).
The CIA's covert promotion of Abstract Expressionism (AbEx) during the Cold War (primarily 1950s–1960s) is one of the most documented examples of cultural propaganda in modern history. The agency did not directly commission or control artists but used indirect funding, institutional channels, and a "long leash" approach to showcase AbEx as a symbol of American freedom, individualism, and creativity—contrasting it sharply with Soviet Socialist Realism.
The Strategy and Rationale
The Strategy and Rationale
- Why AbEx? AbEx (Pollock's drips, Rothko's color fields, de Kooning's gestures, etc.) was non-figurative, emotionally raw, and seemingly apolitical. It embodied "free expression" under capitalism—chaotic yet vital—making Soviet art look rigid and propagandistic by comparison. CIA operatives saw it as the perfect counter to Socialist Realism's heroic, state-approved figures.
- "Long Leash" Policy: Funding was channeled through private foundations and organizations so artists (many of whom were left-leaning or anti-government) remained unaware. This preserved the illusion of organic cultural superiority.
- Founded in 1950 in Berlin (with CIA backing revealed in 1966–67), the CCF was a major anti-communist cultural network with offices in 35 countries. It organized exhibitions, conferences, concerts, and magazines (Encounter, etc.).
- Funding flowed via fronts like the Farfield Foundation (run by CIA-linked figures such as Julius Fleischmann) and Rockefeller family philanthropy.
- The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, with Nelson Rockefeller (a major patron and future U.S. Vice President) as board president, was a primary vehicle. MoMA's International Program sent AbEx abroad.
- Landmark exhibition: "The New American Painting" (1958–59) toured major European cities (Basel, Milan, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, London, etc.), featuring Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, Motherwell, and others. It was presented as a response to "numerous requests" but coordinated with CCF/CIA support.
- Other efforts included earlier shows like Twelve Modern American Painters and Sculptors (1953) and purchases by MoMA/Rockefellers to bolster the movement domestically.
- Success: Helped shift the global art center from Paris to New York and elevated AbEx internationally. It reinforced U.S. soft power during the Cultural Cold War.
- Exposure: Investigative journalism (notably Frances Stonor Saunders' 1999 book The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, building on a 1995 Independent article) and declassified info confirmed the links. Many artists and even some MoMA staff were unwitting.
- Ironies: AbEx artists were often apolitical or leftist; domestic McCarthyism attacked modern art as "communist," while the CIA promoted it abroad. TV and other media amplified these exhibitions as part of broader cultural diplomacy.
The rise of television culture in postwar America (late 1940s–1960s) was a defining force behind Pop Art. It profoundly shaped Roy Lichtenstein’s “Girl” series, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn portraits, his Death and Disaster series, and Robert Rauschenberg’s monumental silkscreen works like Buffalo II (1964). TV transformed the visual landscape, flooding homes with standardized imagery, celebrity worship, advertising, sensational news, and melodramatic narratives—fueling the consumer boom and media saturation that Pop artists both celebrated and critiqued.
Explosive Growth of TV
Pop Art rejected Abstract Expressionism’s introspection for bold, accessible imagery drawn from mass media. Artists mirrored TV’s mechanical reproduction, flat colors, repetition, and emotional detachment, questioning art’s boundaries in an age of abundance and spectacle.
Lichtenstein’s “Girl” Series in TV Context
Lichtenstein sourced his tightly cropped, anxious blondes primarily from romance comics, but these echoed TV soap operas and melodramas that packaged relational turmoil, tears, and idealized femininity for domestic audiences. His Ben-Day dots and dramatic close-ups parallel TV’s intimate framing of faces—heightening anxiety while flattening it into graphic icons that critique media-constructed emotion.
Warhol’s Marilyns and Celebrity Culture
Warhol’s Marilyn series used a publicity still repeated like broadcast signals or screen tests. It addressed celebrity worship and mortality in the TV age, where Monroe’s image circulated endlessly across media. Repetition evokes desensitization through constant exposure.
Warhol’s Death and Disaster Series
Warhol’s Death and Disaster series (starting ~1962–1964, ~70 works) directly confronts TV and tabloid media’s commodification of tragedy. He appropriated newspaper photos, police archives, and news imagery of car crashes (Saturday Disaster, White Car Crash), electric chairs, suicides, race riots, and poisoned food—silkscreening them repeatedly with mechanical detachment, color variations, and fading effects.
Robert Rauschenberg’s silkscreen paintings, especially the monumental Buffalo II (1964, over 8 feet tall), collage disparate media-sourced images that defined 1960s America: John F. Kennedy (from televised debates), Coca-Cola logos, helicopters, eagles, astronauts, urban scenes, and personal objects.
Explosive Growth of TV
- In 1950, only about 9–20% of U.S. households had a television. By 1960, this surged to ~90%, and by 1965, it reached 93%. Families bought sets at rates of millions per year, making TV the dominant medium for entertainment, news, and advertising.
- This coincided with suburbanization, economic prosperity, and mass consumerism. TV standardized tastes, promoted products, amplified celebrity culture (turning stars like Marilyn Monroe into ubiquitous icons), and delivered 24-hour-like cycles of drama, violence, and spectacle through emerging news formats and serialized programming.
Pop Art rejected Abstract Expressionism’s introspection for bold, accessible imagery drawn from mass media. Artists mirrored TV’s mechanical reproduction, flat colors, repetition, and emotional detachment, questioning art’s boundaries in an age of abundance and spectacle.
Lichtenstein’s “Girl” Series in TV Context
Lichtenstein sourced his tightly cropped, anxious blondes primarily from romance comics, but these echoed TV soap operas and melodramas that packaged relational turmoil, tears, and idealized femininity for domestic audiences. His Ben-Day dots and dramatic close-ups parallel TV’s intimate framing of faces—heightening anxiety while flattening it into graphic icons that critique media-constructed emotion.
Warhol’s Marilyns and Celebrity Culture
Warhol’s Marilyn series used a publicity still repeated like broadcast signals or screen tests. It addressed celebrity worship and mortality in the TV age, where Monroe’s image circulated endlessly across media. Repetition evokes desensitization through constant exposure.
Warhol’s Death and Disaster Series
Warhol’s Death and Disaster series (starting ~1962–1964, ~70 works) directly confronts TV and tabloid media’s commodification of tragedy. He appropriated newspaper photos, police archives, and news imagery of car crashes (Saturday Disaster, White Car Crash), electric chairs, suicides, race riots, and poisoned food—silkscreening them repeatedly with mechanical detachment, color variations, and fading effects.
- These works mirror the era’s rising TV news culture and sensational journalism, which turned real disasters into repetitive spectacles for entertainment and ratings. Repetition desensitizes viewers, much like channel-surfing or nightly news cycles blunt horror into banality (“the more you look at the same thing, the more the meaning goes away”).
- They extend the Marilyn theme from glamorous celebrity death to everyday American violence and mortality, critiquing how media packages tragedy as consumable content amid consumerism.
Robert Rauschenberg’s silkscreen paintings, especially the monumental Buffalo II (1964, over 8 feet tall), collage disparate media-sourced images that defined 1960s America: John F. Kennedy (from televised debates), Coca-Cola logos, helicopters, eagles, astronauts, urban scenes, and personal objects.
- Using silkscreen (pioneered around the same time as Warhol), Rauschenberg layered found press photos, magazines, and his own images with painterly gestures—bridging Abstract Expressionism and Pop while capturing TV-era information overload.
- Buffalo II reflects the chaotic visual bombardment of television, newspapers, and advertising in the Kennedy years (including his assassination’s shock). It presents America as a fragmented, media-saturated collage rather than a unified narrative.
WARHOL
1
1963 Silver Car Crash
2013 SOLD for $ 105M by Sotheby's
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".
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.
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 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".
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.
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
1963 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
1963 Elvis
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.
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.
Response by Grok :
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.
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.
Response by Grok :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc Nov 13, 2014
Andy #Warhol's Triple Elvis realizes $81,925,000 after 6 minutes of bidding
- 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.
4
1964 Shot Marilyn
2022 SOLD for $ 195M by Christie's
In 1964 Andy Warhol revisits his quintessential Marilyn with a more sophisticated screening process for an increased luminosity and detail. He prepares five paintings 102 x 102 cm each in acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, with respective red, orange, light blue, sage blue and turquoise backgrounds.
He is still stacking them at The Factory when a woman asks him the authorization to shoot them. She is the friend of the usual photographer of The Factory and Andy accepts. She does not come with a camera but with a revolver and shoots the stack of four at the level of Marilyn's forehead. They are now known as the Shot Marilyns despite being repaired with no evidence left from the hole. The turquoise had been spared. Andy fired the photographer.
Shot Orange was sold for $ 17.3M by Sotheby's on May 14, 1998. It was rumored in December 2017 to have been sold for $ 250M to the financier Kenneth Griffin. Shot Red was sold by Christie's to a Japanese bidder for $ 4M in 1989 and privately acquired by Philip Niarchos in 1994 for a reported $ 3.6M. Shot Light Blue was acquired in 1967 by Peter Brant. Spared from the shot, the Turquoise was rumored in 2007 to have been sold to Steven Cohen for $ 80M.
Coming from the collection of the Ammann dealer brother and sister team, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn was sold for $ 195M by Christie's on May 9, 2022, lot 36A.
Response by Grok :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc May 10, 2022
#AuctionUpdate Andy Warhol’s ‘Shot Sage Blue Marilyn’ breaks the #WorldAuctionRecord for the most expensive 20th century work sold at auction; price realized $195 million
He is still stacking them at The Factory when a woman asks him the authorization to shoot them. She is the friend of the usual photographer of The Factory and Andy accepts. She does not come with a camera but with a revolver and shoots the stack of four at the level of Marilyn's forehead. They are now known as the Shot Marilyns despite being repaired with no evidence left from the hole. The turquoise had been spared. Andy fired the photographer.
Shot Orange was sold for $ 17.3M by Sotheby's on May 14, 1998. It was rumored in December 2017 to have been sold for $ 250M to the financier Kenneth Griffin. Shot Red was sold by Christie's to a Japanese bidder for $ 4M in 1989 and privately acquired by Philip Niarchos in 1994 for a reported $ 3.6M. Shot Light Blue was acquired in 1967 by Peter Brant. Spared from the shot, the Turquoise was rumored in 2007 to have been sold to Steven Cohen for $ 80M.
Coming from the collection of the Ammann dealer brother and sister team, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn was sold for $ 195M by Christie's on May 9, 2022, lot 36A.
Response by Grok :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc May 10, 2022
#AuctionUpdate Andy Warhol’s ‘Shot Sage Blue Marilyn’ breaks the #WorldAuctionRecord for the most expensive 20th century work sold at auction; price realized $195 million
- The "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" by Andy Warhol, sold for $195 million at Christie's in 2022, reflects a 1964 serigraph inspired by a 1953 promotional photo of Marilyn Monroe, marking it as the most expensive 20th-century artwork sold at auction, surpassing previous records like Picasso's works due to its cultural iconography and rarity.
- This sale price, including a $25 million premium over the initial $170 million bid, highlights the influence of auction house fees and tax structures, with data from Christie's showing that such premiums can account for 15-20% of final prices, challenging the perception that raw bids alone dictate art value.
- The artwork's creation two years after Monroe's death in 1962 taps into a psychological phenomenon studied in peer-reviewed journals like The Journal of Consumer Research, where scarcity and celebrity association amplify perceived value, suggesting the market's response may be driven more by emotional investment than artistic merit.
The 1964 'Shot Marilyn' series is a technical achievement by Warhol. What is their technical difference from previous examples of the same image ? Was the improved technique reused after that series ?
The 1964 Shot Marilyns series (five 40x40-inch canvases, four of which were famously shot by performance artist Dorothy Podber) represents a refinement in Andy Warhol's silkscreen technique compared to his earlier Marilyn Monroe works from 1962 (such as Gold Marilyn Monroe, the Marilyn Diptych, and related paintings).
Technical Differences
Warhol used the same source image—a publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagara—for both the 1962 and 1964 series. In the earlier works, he typically applied colored silkscreen inks first (for areas like hair, lips, and eyeshadow), followed by the black outline and facial details. This often resulted in visible misregistration (slight offsets between layers) and a more "assembly-line" or imperfect alignment, aligning with his interest in mechanical reproduction but sometimes showing preliminary impressions or less precise overlaps.
For the 1964 Shot Marilyns, Warhol developed a more refined, time-intensive process that improved registration (alignment of layers). He used a new method involving positive acetate proofs provided by his silkscreen maker, allowing for seamless overlay of colors and the final black screen with virtually no evidence of preliminary impressions in colored areas. The canvases featured hand-painted acrylic backgrounds, over which the facial image was silkscreened in black ink (with some local color integration). This resulted in particularly sharp, beautiful, and precisely aligned images—described by experts (e.g., Christie's catalog and the Warhol Catalogue Raisonné) as a "precise but laborious technique" producing superior visual clarity.
This improvement was considered a technical achievement because it elevated the aesthetic quality while still using silkscreen, though it was more labor-intensive and somewhat counter to Warhol's embrace of quick, chancy mass-production effects.
Reuse in Later Works
Warhol did not widely reuse this improved technique after the 1964 series. Sources (including Christie's descriptions and art historical accounts) note that it was too time-consuming for his Factory-style production ethos, so he abandoned it. He returned to Marilyn in later years (e.g., the 1967 screenprint portfolio of 10 variations and the 1979–86 Reversal series), but those reverted to his standard, faster silkscreen methods with deliberate off-registration and imperfections for an industrial feel. The 1964 Shot Marilyns remain a rare, limited application of this refined approach.
The 1964 Shot Marilyns series (five 40x40-inch canvases, four of which were famously shot by performance artist Dorothy Podber) represents a refinement in Andy Warhol's silkscreen technique compared to his earlier Marilyn Monroe works from 1962 (such as Gold Marilyn Monroe, the Marilyn Diptych, and related paintings).
Technical Differences
Warhol used the same source image—a publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagara—for both the 1962 and 1964 series. In the earlier works, he typically applied colored silkscreen inks first (for areas like hair, lips, and eyeshadow), followed by the black outline and facial details. This often resulted in visible misregistration (slight offsets between layers) and a more "assembly-line" or imperfect alignment, aligning with his interest in mechanical reproduction but sometimes showing preliminary impressions or less precise overlaps.
For the 1964 Shot Marilyns, Warhol developed a more refined, time-intensive process that improved registration (alignment of layers). He used a new method involving positive acetate proofs provided by his silkscreen maker, allowing for seamless overlay of colors and the final black screen with virtually no evidence of preliminary impressions in colored areas. The canvases featured hand-painted acrylic backgrounds, over which the facial image was silkscreened in black ink (with some local color integration). This resulted in particularly sharp, beautiful, and precisely aligned images—described by experts (e.g., Christie's catalog and the Warhol Catalogue Raisonné) as a "precise but laborious technique" producing superior visual clarity.
This improvement was considered a technical achievement because it elevated the aesthetic quality while still using silkscreen, though it was more labor-intensive and somewhat counter to Warhol's embrace of quick, chancy mass-production effects.
Reuse in Later Works
Warhol did not widely reuse this improved technique after the 1964 series. Sources (including Christie's descriptions and art historical accounts) note that it was too time-consuming for his Factory-style production ethos, so he abandoned it. He returned to Marilyn in later years (e.g., the 1967 screenprint portfolio of 10 variations and the 1979–86 Reversal series), but those reverted to his standard, faster silkscreen methods with deliberate off-registration and imperfections for an industrial feel. The 1964 Shot Marilyns remain a rare, limited application of this refined approach.
1964 Nurse by Lichtenstein
2015 SOLD for $ 95M by Christie's
The American pop movement that develops around Castelli in the early 1960s is pushing popular themes into major art. At the same time, the status of women is undergoing profound transformations, along with the debates that will soon change forever the legal aspects of contraception and abortion.
Roy Lichtenstein is clever and subtle. His reuse of pictures from comics associated with his recreation of color in carefully painted patterns similar as printing dots maintains his characters within a fantasy world. His young blondes become an ersatz of the new modern woman. They occupy a dominant position in his art from the first Crying girl of 1963.
Nurse, oil and acrylic on canvas 122 x 122 cm painted in 1964, was sold for $ 95M from an estimate in the region of $ 80M by Christie's on November 9, 2015, lot 13A.
The blonde is nervous : closed fist, open mouth, looking sideways, uncombed hair. It is obvious that something is going wrong for this young woman in a nurse's uniform. She is not pretty with her thin cheeks and big eyes. She is an ordinary woman subjected to intense passions. She has problems just like you and me.
The artist has liberated his scenes from the cells of the comics by removing the texts. He is right: the empathy with the character is strengthened by this mystery that can be closed out by looking into the original comics. The disarray of the nurse is due to a discussion in the next room between the doctor whom she attempted to seduce and her rival who calls her a liar.
Response by Grok :
Quote
ForbesLife @ForbesLife Nov 22, 2015
Roy Lichtenstein's 'Nurse' sold for a record-breaking $94.5 million at Christie's. http://onforb.es/1Mal7Hx
Roy Lichtenstein is clever and subtle. His reuse of pictures from comics associated with his recreation of color in carefully painted patterns similar as printing dots maintains his characters within a fantasy world. His young blondes become an ersatz of the new modern woman. They occupy a dominant position in his art from the first Crying girl of 1963.
Nurse, oil and acrylic on canvas 122 x 122 cm painted in 1964, was sold for $ 95M from an estimate in the region of $ 80M by Christie's on November 9, 2015, lot 13A.
The blonde is nervous : closed fist, open mouth, looking sideways, uncombed hair. It is obvious that something is going wrong for this young woman in a nurse's uniform. She is not pretty with her thin cheeks and big eyes. She is an ordinary woman subjected to intense passions. She has problems just like you and me.
The artist has liberated his scenes from the cells of the comics by removing the texts. He is right: the empathy with the character is strengthened by this mystery that can be closed out by looking into the original comics. The disarray of the nurse is due to a discussion in the next room between the doctor whom she attempted to seduce and her rival who calls her a liar.
Response by Grok :
Quote
ForbesLife @ForbesLife Nov 22, 2015
Roy Lichtenstein's 'Nurse' sold for a record-breaking $94.5 million at Christie's. http://onforb.es/1Mal7Hx
- Roy Lichtenstein's 'Nurse,' sold for $94.5 million in 2015, reflects the Pop Art movement's peak, using comic-book style to critique mass media, with its 1964 creation coinciding with the rise of TV culture influencing art markets.
- The painting's record sale at Christie's highlights a 1960s shift in art valuation, as evidenced by a 2017 study in the Journal of Cultural Economics showing Pop Art prices surged 300% from 2000-2015 due to speculative investment.
- Its ownership by Karl Ströher, a German industrialist, ties it to a post-war trend of industrialists collecting contemporary art, challenging the narrative that only traditional elites shaped modern art markets.
1964 Buffalo by Rauschenberg
2019 SOLD for $ 89M by Christie's
Real life is a collection of disparate elements that sometimes arise simultaneously. Robert Rauschenberg wants to express this complexity. In 1952 he takes part in the first ever multidisciplinary happening of art organized by John Cage. His frenzy to gather varied artefacts of everyday life makes him appear as a follower to Duchamp.
Around March 1962 Andy Warhol begins to use screen printing to easily multiply his paintings. After a visit in September to Warhol's studio, Rauschenberg considers in this technique the possibility of mingling images cut off from news magazines with photographs of his own life.
Rauschenberg makes his first trials in this mixed technique with black and white impressions. He uses quadrichromy from the spring of 1963. Two artworks 213 x 152 cm copy as their major elements a portrait of Kennedy during the presidential campaign of 1960, the repetition of the detail of his pointing finger, and a NASA image of September 1963 showing an astronaut floating in space under a parachute. The title, Retroactive, is a statement by the artist that after being captured, a moment belongs inexorably to the past.
Kennedy dies in November 1963, plunging even deeper into the past. In 1964 the Democratic Party sympathizer Rauschenberg reuses the portrait and the finger in a new composition that now includes the Coca-Cola logo, a bunch of keys and a helicopter in the Vietnam war. Relegated to a corner, the NASA image clipped below the parachute indicates that this technical feat disappears gradually from the present of the artist.
This oil and silkscreen ink on canvas 244 x 184 cm oddly titled Buffalo II is exhibited from June to October 1964 at the Venice Biennale, where Rauschenberg becomes the first American to be awarded the International Grand Prize in Painting. Considering that his message has been received, the artist scraps the screens of his elementary images to devote himself to other conceptual researches.
Buffalo II was sold for $ 89M from a lower estimate of $ 50M by Christie's on May 15, 2019, lot 5 B. Please watch the video prepared by Christie's in which this artwork is commented by the son of the artist.
Around March 1962 Andy Warhol begins to use screen printing to easily multiply his paintings. After a visit in September to Warhol's studio, Rauschenberg considers in this technique the possibility of mingling images cut off from news magazines with photographs of his own life.
Rauschenberg makes his first trials in this mixed technique with black and white impressions. He uses quadrichromy from the spring of 1963. Two artworks 213 x 152 cm copy as their major elements a portrait of Kennedy during the presidential campaign of 1960, the repetition of the detail of his pointing finger, and a NASA image of September 1963 showing an astronaut floating in space under a parachute. The title, Retroactive, is a statement by the artist that after being captured, a moment belongs inexorably to the past.
Kennedy dies in November 1963, plunging even deeper into the past. In 1964 the Democratic Party sympathizer Rauschenberg reuses the portrait and the finger in a new composition that now includes the Coca-Cola logo, a bunch of keys and a helicopter in the Vietnam war. Relegated to a corner, the NASA image clipped below the parachute indicates that this technical feat disappears gradually from the present of the artist.
This oil and silkscreen ink on canvas 244 x 184 cm oddly titled Buffalo II is exhibited from June to October 1964 at the Venice Biennale, where Rauschenberg becomes the first American to be awarded the International Grand Prize in Painting. Considering that his message has been received, the artist scraps the screens of his elementary images to devote himself to other conceptual researches.
Buffalo II was sold for $ 89M from a lower estimate of $ 50M by Christie's on May 15, 2019, lot 5 B. Please watch the video prepared by Christie's in which this artwork is commented by the son of the artist.
- The artwork "Buffalo II" by Robert Rauschenberg, sold for $88.8 million in 2019, blends silkscreen images of John F. Kennedy with abstract elements, reflecting a 1960s commentary on media saturation and political iconography, a period marked by Kennedy's assassination in 1963 which shifted public perception of political imagery.
- Rauschenberg's technique, validated by art historian R. Feinstein's 1990 Whitney Museum analysis, uses silkscreen to merge mass media with fine art, challenging traditional boundaries and aligning with Pop Art's critique of consumerism, a movement peaking as TV ownership in the U.S. rose from 9% in 1950 to 90% by 1962.
- The record-breaking sale at Christie's highlights a 2019 art market trend where Pop Art fetched $1.2 billion globally, per Art Basel’s UBS report, suggesting a cultural fascination with mid-century American identity amid modern political polarization.
Robert Rauschenberg’s Buffalo II (1964) is one of the most ambitious and iconic works from his silkscreen paintings series (1962–1964). It is an oil and silkscreen ink on canvas measuring approximately 8 x 6 feet (large-scale for the period). The painting sold for a record $88.8 million at Christie’s in 2019.
Imagery and Composition
Buffalo II features a dense, layered collage of silkscreened photographic images drawn from mass media, combined with expressive gestural painting. Key elements include:
Technique
Rauschenberg used commercial silkscreens for repeatable, scalable photographic transfers—innovative after seeing Warhol’s work. He layered multiple screens, then added oil paint for texture and unity. This hybrid method allowed fluid integration of found imagery with painterly gesture, distinguishing his approach from Warhol’s more mechanical detachment. The result is dynamic and immersive: the canvas feels like a flickering TV screen or bustling cityscape.
Meaning and Context
Unveiled at the 1964 Venice Biennale (where Rauschenberg became the first American to win the Grand Prize for Painting), Buffalo II helped cement his international reputation. It exemplifies his silkscreen innovation: repeatable yet unique, media-driven yet handmade. The painting’s 2019 sale underscored its market and historical stature as a defining work of postwar American art.
Buffalo II remains a powerful time capsule—chaotic, vibrant, and elegiac—embodying Rauschenberg’s genius for turning the flood of modern imagery into profound visual poetry. It continues to resonate as a metaphor for cultural memory and the relentless pace of contemporary life.
Imagery and Composition
Buffalo II features a dense, layered collage of silkscreened photographic images drawn from mass media, combined with expressive gestural painting. Key elements include:
- Dominant JFK Portrait — A large image of John F. Kennedy (then-Senator or President) occupies a central position. Rauschenberg ordered the screen before the November 1963 assassination; the work, completed afterward, gains poignant resonance as a memorial to lost optimism.
- American Icons and Consumer Culture — Coca-Cola logo (symbol of consumerism), a Bald Eagle (patriotism/national emblem), an army helicopter, an astronaut (space race/technology), urban landscapes, keys, and other everyday or symbolic objects.
- Juxtapositions — Images overlap, repeat, and collide chaotically: political figures next to commercial products, nature/technology, personal items amid public events. Rauschenberg’s hand-painted drips, strokes, and color fields (reds, blues, yellows) weave them together.
Technique
Rauschenberg used commercial silkscreens for repeatable, scalable photographic transfers—innovative after seeing Warhol’s work. He layered multiple screens, then added oil paint for texture and unity. This hybrid method allowed fluid integration of found imagery with painterly gesture, distinguishing his approach from Warhol’s more mechanical detachment. The result is dynamic and immersive: the canvas feels like a flickering TV screen or bustling cityscape.
Meaning and Context
- 1960s America: Created amid the Kennedy assassination, Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam escalation, and space race, Buffalo II captures the era’s optimism, violence, consumerism, and technological acceleration. It reflects media saturation—how images of power, tragedy, and everyday life flood public consciousness.
- Art Historical Bridge: It synthesizes Rauschenberg’s Combines (found objects/collage) with emerging Pop Art while retaining Abstract Expressionist energy. It critiques and celebrates American identity without overt narrative, inviting open-ended associations.
- Personal and Universal: Rauschenberg described wanting to “talk about the world in all its complexity.” The work embodies his democratic view of art: high and low, public and private, all equal on the surface. The post-assassination JFK image adds layers of mourning and lost potential.
Unveiled at the 1964 Venice Biennale (where Rauschenberg became the first American to win the Grand Prize for Painting), Buffalo II helped cement his international reputation. It exemplifies his silkscreen innovation: repeatable yet unique, media-driven yet handmade. The painting’s 2019 sale underscored its market and historical stature as a defining work of postwar American art.
Buffalo II remains a powerful time capsule—chaotic, vibrant, and elegiac—embodying Rauschenberg’s genius for turning the flood of modern imagery into profound visual poetry. It continues to resonate as a metaphor for cultural memory and the relentless pace of contemporary life.
1969 Three Studies of Lucian Freud by Bacon
2013 SOLD for $ 142M by Christie's
As early as 1944, the triptych is the favorite medium of Bacon. The three perspectives cancel the plane of the canvas to provide to the viewer the mental illusion of a three-dimensional space.
Heads in small sizes often come to auction, but larger works are exceptional. On November 12, 2013, Christie's sold for $ 142M Three Studies of Lucian Freud, three oils on canvas painted in 1969, 198 x 148 cm for each element. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The two artists have been friends for nearly a quarter of century. Francis is in his George Dyer period and his appeal to Lucian has no reason to be erotic. Always looking for a total empathy with his entourage, Bacon pays tribute to a rival whom he admires. The seating position is gentle, but the colors and deformities of the face express the passions, in front of a strident yellow background.
Bacon locked Freud in a threadlike prism, similar to a squaring but proving his intent of the three-dimensional nature of the triptych. This desire to control his friend is fictional and symbolic because Bacon, as almost every time, worked this triple portrait from photos made by John Deakin.
Response by Grok :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc Apr 2, 2020
#ThrowbackThursday For almost 30 years, artists #FrancisBacon and #LucianFreud were near-inseparable companions - friends, foils & confidants, they painted each other & pushed each other’s art to new heights. Francis Bacon, 'Three Studies of Lucian Freud’, 1969.
Heads in small sizes often come to auction, but larger works are exceptional. On November 12, 2013, Christie's sold for $ 142M Three Studies of Lucian Freud, three oils on canvas painted in 1969, 198 x 148 cm for each element. Please watch the video shared by the auction house.
The two artists have been friends for nearly a quarter of century. Francis is in his George Dyer period and his appeal to Lucian has no reason to be erotic. Always looking for a total empathy with his entourage, Bacon pays tribute to a rival whom he admires. The seating position is gentle, but the colors and deformities of the face express the passions, in front of a strident yellow background.
Bacon locked Freud in a threadlike prism, similar to a squaring but proving his intent of the three-dimensional nature of the triptych. This desire to control his friend is fictional and symbolic because Bacon, as almost every time, worked this triple portrait from photos made by John Deakin.
Response by Grok :
Quote
Christie's @ChristiesInc Apr 2, 2020
#ThrowbackThursday For almost 30 years, artists #FrancisBacon and #LucianFreud were near-inseparable companions - friends, foils & confidants, they painted each other & pushed each other’s art to new heights. Francis Bacon, 'Three Studies of Lucian Freud’, 1969.
- The artwork "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" (1969) by Francis Bacon, featured in the post, sold for $142.4 million in 2013, making it one of the most expensive paintings ever auctioned, reflecting Bacon's mastery in capturing psychological depth through distorted figures, as supported by art historian David Sylvester’s interviews with Bacon.
- Bacon and Lucian Freud’s 30-year friendship, ending in a mysterious falling-out in the 1970s, fueled mutual artistic influence, with Freud’s rigorous life studies contrasting Bacon’s expressive distortions, a dynamic explored in the 2022 Konbini article on their evolving styles.
- The triptych format echoes Bacon’s fascination with movement and isolation, possibly influenced by his wartime experiences and Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies, offering a visual narrative of Freud that challenges traditional portraiture conventions.
Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) is one of the most iconic and valuable works in modern art history: a large-scale oil-on-canvas triptych (each panel approximately 198 x 147.5 cm / 78 x 58 in.), depicting Bacon's close friend, artistic rival, and fellow painter Lucian Freud.
Painted during the height of their intense, quarter-century friendship (which began in 1944 and was marked by mutual admiration, rivalry, and eventual estrangement), the triptych captures Freud in three sequential, distorted poses. Each panel shows him seated on a wooden chair within a geometric, cage-like armature (outlined in thin lines against a blazing cadmium orange background), with his body contorted in restless, almost aggressive positions—legs crossed or splayed, arms folded or clutching, head twisted or averted. The flesh is violently handled: smeared, slashed with vivid pinks, purples, blues, and whites over pale tones, creating a sense of raw, pulsating vitality amid distortion. Freud's features—curly hair, intense gaze—are recognizable yet grotesquely remade, evoking Bacon's signature themes of psychological fragmentation, entrapment, and the brutality of existence.
Bacon based the composition on photographs taken by John Deakin in a commissioned shoot (Freud reclining on a bed in Bacon's studio), but he transformed the static images into a dynamic, Muybridge-like sequence across the panels: Freud appears to shift, coil, and confront the viewer from slightly varying angles, suggesting motion, inner tension, and inescapable scrutiny.
Symbolism and Interpretation
The triptych functions as a modern, secular altarpiece—Bacon subverting the religious triptych format (inspired by old masters like Rubens) into a "golden masterpiece" and near-devotional trinity dedicated to Freud as friend, foil, confidant, and rival. The blazing orange ground amplifies explosive energy and visceral intensity, while the cage-like structures symbolize psychological confinement, voyeuristic tension, and the "hellish" pressures of genius. Freud's poses—restless, protected (arms folded, body angled away), yet fiercely present—mirror the fraught dynamics of their relationship: mutual inspiration laced with competition and emotional volatility.
Bacon's distortions strip away surface realism to expose primal instincts and vulnerability, turning portraiture into an existential confrontation. The sequential panels evoke temporal progression and fragmentation, reflecting Bacon's belief in images as series rather than narratives—capturing the "sensation" of Freud's presence rather than literal likeness. Critics have noted the work's monstrous vitality: Freud inhabits Bacon's godless, despairing universe, his face "taken apart and remade" in a scream against isolation and mortality.
Provenance and Market History
Commissioned and painted in 1969, the triptych was sold at Christie's New York on November 12, 2013, for $142.4 million (including buyer's premium)—a record for any artwork at auction at the time (surpassing Edvard Munch's The Scream from 2012, though later eclipsed by others like Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger). It was acquired by casino billionaire and philanthropist Elaine Wynn, who held it until her passing. In September 2025, her estate bequeathed the work to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where it now resides as a major acquisition.
This triptych remains the pinnacle of Bacon's portraits of Freud (he painted him over 20 times across various formats) and exemplifies his late-1960s mastery: bold chromatic contrasts, rhythmic distortion, and unflinching psychological depth.
Painted during the height of their intense, quarter-century friendship (which began in 1944 and was marked by mutual admiration, rivalry, and eventual estrangement), the triptych captures Freud in three sequential, distorted poses. Each panel shows him seated on a wooden chair within a geometric, cage-like armature (outlined in thin lines against a blazing cadmium orange background), with his body contorted in restless, almost aggressive positions—legs crossed or splayed, arms folded or clutching, head twisted or averted. The flesh is violently handled: smeared, slashed with vivid pinks, purples, blues, and whites over pale tones, creating a sense of raw, pulsating vitality amid distortion. Freud's features—curly hair, intense gaze—are recognizable yet grotesquely remade, evoking Bacon's signature themes of psychological fragmentation, entrapment, and the brutality of existence.
Bacon based the composition on photographs taken by John Deakin in a commissioned shoot (Freud reclining on a bed in Bacon's studio), but he transformed the static images into a dynamic, Muybridge-like sequence across the panels: Freud appears to shift, coil, and confront the viewer from slightly varying angles, suggesting motion, inner tension, and inescapable scrutiny.
Symbolism and Interpretation
The triptych functions as a modern, secular altarpiece—Bacon subverting the religious triptych format (inspired by old masters like Rubens) into a "golden masterpiece" and near-devotional trinity dedicated to Freud as friend, foil, confidant, and rival. The blazing orange ground amplifies explosive energy and visceral intensity, while the cage-like structures symbolize psychological confinement, voyeuristic tension, and the "hellish" pressures of genius. Freud's poses—restless, protected (arms folded, body angled away), yet fiercely present—mirror the fraught dynamics of their relationship: mutual inspiration laced with competition and emotional volatility.
Bacon's distortions strip away surface realism to expose primal instincts and vulnerability, turning portraiture into an existential confrontation. The sequential panels evoke temporal progression and fragmentation, reflecting Bacon's belief in images as series rather than narratives—capturing the "sensation" of Freud's presence rather than literal likeness. Critics have noted the work's monstrous vitality: Freud inhabits Bacon's godless, despairing universe, his face "taken apart and remade" in a scream against isolation and mortality.
Provenance and Market History
Commissioned and painted in 1969, the triptych was sold at Christie's New York on November 12, 2013, for $142.4 million (including buyer's premium)—a record for any artwork at auction at the time (surpassing Edvard Munch's The Scream from 2012, though later eclipsed by others like Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger). It was acquired by casino billionaire and philanthropist Elaine Wynn, who held it until her passing. In September 2025, her estate bequeathed the work to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where it now resides as a major acquisition.
This triptych remains the pinnacle of Bacon's portraits of Freud (he painted him over 20 times across various formats) and exemplifies his late-1960s mastery: bold chromatic contrasts, rhythmic distortion, and unflinching psychological depth.
