Andy WARHOL (1928-1987)
See also : Painting USA Celebrities by Warhol USA by Warhol Later Warhols Groups Christianity Animals
Chronology : 20th Century 1960-1969 1962 1963 1964 1966 1980-1989 1986
Chronology : 20th Century 1960-1969 1962 1963 1964 1966 1980-1989 1986
1962 Men in her Life by Warhol
2010 SOLD for $ 63M including premium by Phillips de Pury
narrated in 2020
The artistic language explored by Andy Warhol in 1962 is absolutely new. Objects from the mass consumption have their place in art in the form of series because they constitute an imaginary world understandable by everybody, and too bad if it is trivial. When he appreciates the advantage of screen printing to flood the art world with his pictures, he multiplies the dollars, more precisely the images of banknotes.
The world is fake and the celebrities are ephemeral. Warhol multiplies the Marilyns after the death of the actress as if she were a new Madonna. It is not enough for him. He will attack both the artificial life of the stars and the lies of photographs and newspapers.
Precisely, an article published by Life on April 13, 1962 summarizes the pathetic trajectory of the top movie star of the moment, Liz Taylor. After two divorces, she had been the widow of Mike Todd and it is clear that her fourth marriage, with Eddie Fisher, will not last. One of the photos cut from Life had been taken at the Epsom Derby in 1957. It shows two married couples whose destinies will soon collapse, Todd and Taylor and Fisher with Debbie Reynolds.
Made in the fall of 1962, Men in her Life is a black and white silkscreen on canvas 215 x 212 cm based on that happy image which is copied 38 times in seven rows. The artist varied the contrasts, from saturated to clear. A classic reading from left to right and from top to bottom transforms this unique theme into an agonizing narration, with a gradual deterioration in the quality of the image and in its cropping and with the jagged appearance of the right edge.
The variety of contrasts and framings opens the way for the Elvis Ferus-type of the following year. The title makes the actress appear as a man-eater, anticipating the morbid atmosphere of Death and Disaster and especially the mosaics of images of Car Crash, also from 1963. Again in 1963 the seriously ill Liz will succeed Marilyn in Warhol's pantheon.
Men in her Life was sold for $ 63M including premium by Phillips de Pury on November 8, 2010, lot 15. The low definition image is shared by Wikipedia for fair use.
The world is fake and the celebrities are ephemeral. Warhol multiplies the Marilyns after the death of the actress as if she were a new Madonna. It is not enough for him. He will attack both the artificial life of the stars and the lies of photographs and newspapers.
Precisely, an article published by Life on April 13, 1962 summarizes the pathetic trajectory of the top movie star of the moment, Liz Taylor. After two divorces, she had been the widow of Mike Todd and it is clear that her fourth marriage, with Eddie Fisher, will not last. One of the photos cut from Life had been taken at the Epsom Derby in 1957. It shows two married couples whose destinies will soon collapse, Todd and Taylor and Fisher with Debbie Reynolds.
Made in the fall of 1962, Men in her Life is a black and white silkscreen on canvas 215 x 212 cm based on that happy image which is copied 38 times in seven rows. The artist varied the contrasts, from saturated to clear. A classic reading from left to right and from top to bottom transforms this unique theme into an agonizing narration, with a gradual deterioration in the quality of the image and in its cropping and with the jagged appearance of the right edge.
The variety of contrasts and framings opens the way for the Elvis Ferus-type of the following year. The title makes the actress appear as a man-eater, anticipating the morbid atmosphere of Death and Disaster and especially the mosaics of images of Car Crash, also from 1963. Again in 1963 the seriously ill Liz will succeed Marilyn in Warhol's pantheon.
Men in her Life was sold for $ 63M including premium by Phillips de Pury on November 8, 2010, lot 15. The low definition image is shared by Wikipedia for fair use.
1962 Coca-Cola for Everybody
2013 SOLD 57 M$ including premium
1962 is the wonderful year of Andy Warhol, when he suddenly deploys all his artistic and social language. The bottle of Coca-Cola has a key role which he clearly explained.
For Warhol, this bottle in a single model with no variant is the common point between all Americans without any social distinction. The US President, Liz Taylor and the observer of the art of Warhol see and use this object in the same way. It is a symbol of equality. At the same time, Warhol is also studying the soup cans which he stages in incredible positions with dimensions similar to those of humans.
Equality is socially too important for joking, and the bottle of Coca-Cola, even when oversized, remains standing with the utmost seriousness. For this reason, variations are not appropriate and this bottle is the rarest among the great iconic symbols of the first year of Warhol.
The early Coca-Colas by Warhol are made singly by hand in black, without recourse to the silkscreen. Coca-Cola (4), acrylic on canvas 208 x 144 cm, was sold for $ 35.3 million including premium by Sotheby's on November 9, 2010.
The idea of multiples is already another key of the world of Warhol. Coca-Cola (3), casein on cotton 176 x 137 cm, has exactly the same figure as (4). Coca-Cola (3) is estimated $ 40M, for sale by Christie's in New York on November 12. This artwork is illustrated in the article shared by Bloomberg.
POST SALE COMMENT
This specimen number 3 of the most iconic series of Pop Art was sold for $ 57M including premium.
For Warhol, this bottle in a single model with no variant is the common point between all Americans without any social distinction. The US President, Liz Taylor and the observer of the art of Warhol see and use this object in the same way. It is a symbol of equality. At the same time, Warhol is also studying the soup cans which he stages in incredible positions with dimensions similar to those of humans.
Equality is socially too important for joking, and the bottle of Coca-Cola, even when oversized, remains standing with the utmost seriousness. For this reason, variations are not appropriate and this bottle is the rarest among the great iconic symbols of the first year of Warhol.
The early Coca-Colas by Warhol are made singly by hand in black, without recourse to the silkscreen. Coca-Cola (4), acrylic on canvas 208 x 144 cm, was sold for $ 35.3 million including premium by Sotheby's on November 9, 2010.
The idea of multiples is already another key of the world of Warhol. Coca-Cola (3), casein on cotton 176 x 137 cm, has exactly the same figure as (4). Coca-Cola (3) is estimated $ 40M, for sale by Christie's in New York on November 12. This artwork is illustrated in the article shared by Bloomberg.
POST SALE COMMENT
This specimen number 3 of the most iconic series of Pop Art was sold for $ 57M including premium.
1963 The Disaster of America
2013 SOLD 105 M$ including premium
The American dream is not enough to express the world. Very early, Andy Warhol wants to confront death. Death and Disaster is the generic name he gave to this new artistic theme. The news spread by the magazines are horrible. In 1963, Andy rescreened the images of their most terrible car accidents.
On November 13 in New York, Sotheby's sells Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), 267 x 416 cm. It is a diptych, estimated $ 60M. It is illustrated on the blog post shared by Sotheby's.
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.
Another accident of the same year based on two different images became famous in the history of auctions when Christie's sold Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), 229 x 203 cm, for $ 72M including premium on 16 May 2007 from a lower estimate of $ 25M showing that the tragic dimension of Warhol's art had not yet been appreciated at its fair value .
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).
I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's.
POST SALE COMMENT
This highly important Warhol was sold for $ 105M including premium.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
On November 13 in New York, Sotheby's sells Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), 267 x 416 cm. It is a diptych, estimated $ 60M. It is illustrated on the blog post shared by Sotheby's.
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.
Another accident of the same year based on two different images became famous in the history of auctions when Christie's sold Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), 229 x 203 cm, for $ 72M including premium on 16 May 2007 from a lower estimate of $ 25M showing that the tragic dimension of Warhol's art had not yet been appreciated at its fair value .
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).
I invite you to play the video shared by Sotheby's.
POST SALE COMMENT
This highly important Warhol was sold for $ 105M including premium.
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
1963 The King and the Bad Boy
2014 SOLD for $ 82M including premium
After exploiting the adoration of the public for two actresses, Marilyn and Liz, Andy Warhol looked at the male actors. OnNovember 12 in New York, Christie's sells two of his most outstanding works in this theme, the Triple Elvis (Ferus Type) and the Quadruple Marlon. Both men, each in his own way, embodied the rebellion of the younger generation.
The 1963 exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles gave an opportunity for the artist to prepare multiple images of the King on a silver background that evoked the movie screen. On 9 May 2012, Sotheby's sold for $ 37M including premium a Double Elvis (Ferus Type), 208 x 122 cm, for which the inequality of density of the two identical figures brings a feeling of frenzy.
For the Triple Elvis, lot 9 of the next sale, 208 x 173 cm, the three overlapping figures are of equal density but the momentum is provided by their unequal interval.
To honor Marlon in 1966, Andy uses an untreated canvas that enhances the brilliance. On most images, rarer than Elvis, the Bad Boy is a rebel confined to the right side of the canvas.
A Double Marlon 213 x 243 cm, was sold for $ 32M including premium at Christie's on 13 May 2008. The Four Marlons, lot 10 of the next sale, 206 x 165 cm, is the only in this series for which the image occupies the entire surface in two rows of two pictures.
Both lots, to be sold separately, come from a German collection built for decorating a casino. The press release of September 10 announced a global estimate in the region of $ 130M for the two lots.
I invite you to play the two videos shared by Christie's: Elvis andMarlon.
RESULTS INCLUDING PREMIUM
Triple Elvis : 82M
Four Marlons : 70M
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
The 1963 exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles gave an opportunity for the artist to prepare multiple images of the King on a silver background that evoked the movie screen. On 9 May 2012, Sotheby's sold for $ 37M including premium a Double Elvis (Ferus Type), 208 x 122 cm, for which the inequality of density of the two identical figures brings a feeling of frenzy.
For the Triple Elvis, lot 9 of the next sale, 208 x 173 cm, the three overlapping figures are of equal density but the momentum is provided by their unequal interval.
To honor Marlon in 1966, Andy uses an untreated canvas that enhances the brilliance. On most images, rarer than Elvis, the Bad Boy is a rebel confined to the right side of the canvas.
A Double Marlon 213 x 243 cm, was sold for $ 32M including premium at Christie's on 13 May 2008. The Four Marlons, lot 10 of the next sale, 206 x 165 cm, is the only in this series for which the image occupies the entire surface in two rows of two pictures.
Both lots, to be sold separately, come from a German collection built for decorating a casino. The press release of September 10 announced a global estimate in the region of $ 130M for the two lots.
I invite you to play the two videos shared by Christie's: Elvis andMarlon.
RESULTS INCLUDING PREMIUM
Triple Elvis : 82M
Four Marlons : 70M
The low resolution image below is shared by Wikimedia for fair use :
1963 Green Car Crash by Warhol
2007 SOLD for $ 72M including premium by Christie's
narrated in 2020
Andy Warhol achieved 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 the face of the risk of a sudden death. His daily practice of Catholicism will never allow him to reduce this morbid terror. In 1963 he begins his Death and Disaster series. He would say much later: "Nobody in America has a normal life".
He 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 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 including premium by Christie's on May 16, 2007 over a lower estimate of $ 25M, lot 15. This result was at that time the highest price recorded on a work by Warhol.
Using an image from another accident, a Silver Car Crash painted in the same summer brought a similar conclusion : the right part of this diptych is blank. This monumental nightmare 267 x 416 cm was sold for $ 105M including premium by Sotheby's on November 13, 2013, which is a further record for a Warhol.
He 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 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 including premium by Christie's on May 16, 2007 over a lower estimate of $ 25M, lot 15. This result was at that time the highest price recorded on a work by Warhol.
Using an image from another accident, a Silver Car Crash painted in the same summer brought a similar conclusion : the right part of this diptych is blank. This monumental nightmare 267 x 416 cm was sold for $ 105M including premium by Sotheby's on November 13, 2013, which is a further record for a Warhol.
1963 The Solemn Visit of Mona Lisa in America
2015 SOLD for $ 56M including premium
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, is for sale at Christie's in New York on May 13, lot 26B. The estimate is not published, but this lot is expected in the region of $ 40M. Warhol's Liberty referred above was sold for $ 43,7M including premium by Christie's on November 14, 2012.
I invite you to play the video shared by Christie's.
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, is for sale at Christie's in New York on May 13, lot 26B. The estimate is not published, but this lot is expected in the region of $ 40M. Warhol's Liberty referred above was sold for $ 43,7M including premium by Christie's on November 14, 2012.
I invite you to play the video shared by Christie's.
1963 Elvis after the Soup
2019 SOLD for $ 53M including premium
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 used to be 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 and Liz.
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 symbolises 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 very dense display of all this set. He has too much work to participate in the mounting and refuses Blum's invitation.
22 Ferus Type paintings have survived, with single, double or multiple figures. A Triple was sold for $ 82M including premium by Christie's on November 12, 2014. An unusual Double with one of the images in a poor impression was sold by Sotheby's on May 9, 2012 and by Christie's on May 17, 2018, each time for $ 37M including premium.
A Double Elvis in a normally contrasted overlapping, 208 x 122 cm, is estimated $ 50M for sale by Christie's in New York on May 15, lot 23 B.
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 and Liz.
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 symbolises 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 very dense display of all this set. He has too much work to participate in the mounting and refuses Blum's invitation.
22 Ferus Type paintings have survived, with single, double or multiple figures. A Triple was sold for $ 82M including premium by Christie's on November 12, 2014. An unusual Double with one of the images in a poor impression was sold by Sotheby's on May 9, 2012 and by Christie's on May 17, 2018, each time for $ 37M including premium.
A Double Elvis in a normally contrasted overlapping, 208 x 122 cm, is estimated $ 50M for sale by Christie's in New York on May 15, lot 23 B.
1964 The Terrible Twentieth Century
2014 SOLD 63 M$ including premium
The publication by Life magazine on May 17, 1963 of photos of the repression of race riots in Alabama shocked America and the world. The United States are seen as a country in civil war. The land of racial hatred.
This report possibly had the strongest political impact in the history of the press. Kennedy understood that the reforms of laws and behaviors are inevitable. The road will be long, but civil peace will eventually settle. These photos made by Charles Moore for Associated Press are the Guernica of America.
At the same time, Andy Warhol releases the real meaning of his own artistic message. Consumerism is an artifact, advertising is a technique which however has the merit of having shown the expressive power of the multiple image.
Andy chose his press photos around the theme of death in America. The gathering of the Death and Disaster series reveals the true reason of the post mortem portrait of Marilyn. Warhol's message did not receive the same immediate impact as Guernica's. It took almost half a century before the multiples of the Car Crash are pushed toward the top position in the art of the twentieth century.
Recuperating the photos published by Life, the Race Riot by Warhol is his most political image, using a historical event in progress. He hates violence and fears death. The running Black is the victim, the dog excited to bite is the symbol of horror.
After painting a few units of the Race Riot, Warhol made in 1964 a multiple 2 x 2. In the top register, white color is the truth and blue is chilling. On the down side the double red is blood.
This quadruple Race Riot, 152 x 168 cm overall, is for sale on May 13 at Christie's in New York. The estimate of $ 50M was released by Christie's in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
I invite you to play the video shared by Christie's to introduce this lot.
POST SALE COMMENT
The quad of Race Riot is a major piece by Warhol, sold for $ 63M including premium.
This report possibly had the strongest political impact in the history of the press. Kennedy understood that the reforms of laws and behaviors are inevitable. The road will be long, but civil peace will eventually settle. These photos made by Charles Moore for Associated Press are the Guernica of America.
At the same time, Andy Warhol releases the real meaning of his own artistic message. Consumerism is an artifact, advertising is a technique which however has the merit of having shown the expressive power of the multiple image.
Andy chose his press photos around the theme of death in America. The gathering of the Death and Disaster series reveals the true reason of the post mortem portrait of Marilyn. Warhol's message did not receive the same immediate impact as Guernica's. It took almost half a century before the multiples of the Car Crash are pushed toward the top position in the art of the twentieth century.
Recuperating the photos published by Life, the Race Riot by Warhol is his most political image, using a historical event in progress. He hates violence and fears death. The running Black is the victim, the dog excited to bite is the symbol of horror.
After painting a few units of the Race Riot, Warhol made in 1964 a multiple 2 x 2. In the top register, white color is the truth and blue is chilling. On the down side the double red is blood.
This quadruple Race Riot, 152 x 168 cm overall, is for sale on May 13 at Christie's in New York. The estimate of $ 50M was released by Christie's in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
I invite you to play the video shared by Christie's to introduce this lot.
POST SALE COMMENT
The quad of Race Riot is a major piece by Warhol, sold for $ 63M including premium.
1966 Four Marlons by Warhol
2014 SOLD for $ 70M including premium by Christie's
narrated in 2020
Andy Warhol is an interpreter of the society of his time. He was a film buff and the pictorial images which made him famous in 1962 were a last resort. He multiplies cinematographic experiences as producer and director and announces in 1965 that he will devote himself entirely to cinema, with a clear tendency for the underground.
The star actor of the Warhol generation is Marlon Brando. In 1953 in The Wild One, Brando and his gang of bikers embody the rebellion against the established order. The young man's relentless gaze symbolizes the new force that can overturn the civilization.
Cinema occupies a large place in Warhol's pictorial art. Even Elvis, the king of music hall, is shown by an image taken from a movie. In 1963 Warhol chose an advertising image for The Wild One, showing Marlon from the front, on his motorcycle. With his leather jacket and his cap, he is the archetype of the new lawless thug. Andy then makes a single painting, on a silver background.
Warhol resumes in 1966 the theme of Marlon, with the same image. Contrary to his habits, he seems to have chosen to revisit this theme himself, without a commission from a dealer and without a prompting from a friend.
He prepares eight opuses of this Marlon by screen printing on raw unprimed linen, bringing a strange color as well as a great shine, with or without the large empty margin designed to unbalance the reading of the image. Only three of them are repeated images.
A Marlon with a left margin, 104 x 117 cm, was sold for $ 23.7M including premium by Christie's on November 14, 2012. A double Marlon 213 x 243 cm with a very wide margin on the left was sold for $ 32.5M including premium on May 13, 2008, also by Christie's.
The two by two quad 206 x 165 cm without margins has no equivalent in that theme. It was sold for $ 70M including premium by Christie's on November 12, 2014, lot 10.
The star actor of the Warhol generation is Marlon Brando. In 1953 in The Wild One, Brando and his gang of bikers embody the rebellion against the established order. The young man's relentless gaze symbolizes the new force that can overturn the civilization.
Cinema occupies a large place in Warhol's pictorial art. Even Elvis, the king of music hall, is shown by an image taken from a movie. In 1963 Warhol chose an advertising image for The Wild One, showing Marlon from the front, on his motorcycle. With his leather jacket and his cap, he is the archetype of the new lawless thug. Andy then makes a single painting, on a silver background.
Warhol resumes in 1966 the theme of Marlon, with the same image. Contrary to his habits, he seems to have chosen to revisit this theme himself, without a commission from a dealer and without a prompting from a friend.
He prepares eight opuses of this Marlon by screen printing on raw unprimed linen, bringing a strange color as well as a great shine, with or without the large empty margin designed to unbalance the reading of the image. Only three of them are repeated images.
A Marlon with a left margin, 104 x 117 cm, was sold for $ 23.7M including premium by Christie's on November 14, 2012. A double Marlon 213 x 243 cm with a very wide margin on the left was sold for $ 32.5M including premium on May 13, 2008, also by Christie's.
The two by two quad 206 x 165 cm without margins has no equivalent in that theme. It was sold for $ 70M including premium by Christie's on November 12, 2014, lot 10.
1986 Sacrifice and Sharing
2017 SOLD for $ 61M including premium
Shy and famous at the same time, Andy Warhol was discussing with friends throughout his career before selecting his most popular themes. The story of the dollar at the very beginning of his realization of multiples is typical. In 1985 the gallery owner Alexander Iolas suggests a new theme of interpretations of Leonardo's Last Supper to be exhibited in Milan across the street from the permanent location of the original.
Warhol is working hard on this project that had everything to seduce him. For devout Catholics the Last Supper is the founding act of the mystical Christianity by which Christ announces his death and resurrection and especially his sharing with the whole mankind.
Warhol had himself something like a resurrection in 1968 when his heart restarted after the assassination attempt. He felt that he was going to die during the surgical operation of his gallbladder which was inevitable but was constantly postponed by him. This intuition was right.
In that impulse Warhol realized about 100 variations around Leonardo's Last Supper in 1986 while about 20 were enough for the Milan exhibition. He did not take as model the original painting but two poor photographs of old copies. This final project brilliantly terminates his own pop art revolution by which the visual message and the ability to copy and multiply it are more important than the skill even when the artist is Leonardo himself.
This series includes a few monumental pieces in a perfect repetition that reaches the infinite. Christ 112 times in yellow which is a reproduction of a detail measures 203 x 1069 cm. This artwork was sold for $ 9.5M including premium by Sotheby's on May 14, 2008.
On November 15 in New York, Christie's sells as lot 13 B a multiplication of the entire picture, Sixty Last Suppers. This 295 x 998 cm canvas which is undoubtedly the largest in the series and perhaps even in his entire career in terms of surface was not included in the Milan exhibition. Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
Warhol is working hard on this project that had everything to seduce him. For devout Catholics the Last Supper is the founding act of the mystical Christianity by which Christ announces his death and resurrection and especially his sharing with the whole mankind.
Warhol had himself something like a resurrection in 1968 when his heart restarted after the assassination attempt. He felt that he was going to die during the surgical operation of his gallbladder which was inevitable but was constantly postponed by him. This intuition was right.
In that impulse Warhol realized about 100 variations around Leonardo's Last Supper in 1986 while about 20 were enough for the Milan exhibition. He did not take as model the original painting but two poor photographs of old copies. This final project brilliantly terminates his own pop art revolution by which the visual message and the ability to copy and multiply it are more important than the skill even when the artist is Leonardo himself.
This series includes a few monumental pieces in a perfect repetition that reaches the infinite. Christ 112 times in yellow which is a reproduction of a detail measures 203 x 1069 cm. This artwork was sold for $ 9.5M including premium by Sotheby's on May 14, 2008.
On November 15 in New York, Christie's sells as lot 13 B a multiplication of the entire picture, Sixty Last Suppers. This 295 x 998 cm canvas which is undoubtedly the largest in the series and perhaps even in his entire career in terms of surface was not included in the Milan exhibition. Please watch the video shared by Christie's.
