Provenance
The Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York
Mugrabi Collection, New York
Anon. sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 11 May 2006, lot 312
Acquired at the above sale by the previous owner
Exhibited
London and New York, Gagosian Gallery, Andy Warhol: B & W Paintings, Ads and Illustrations 1985-1986, February-March 2002, p. 16 (illustrated)
Monoco, Grimaldi Forum, Super Warhol, July-August 2003, no. 247, p. 484 (illustrated)
Literature
C. Stuckey, ed., Andy Warhol: Heaven and Hell Are Just One Breath Away! Late Paintings and
Related Works, 1984-1986, New York, 1992 p. 47 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
American Pop artist Andy Warhol has long superseded the fifteen minutes of fame he famously allocated for everyone else. An institutional and cultural icon with an artistic process steeped with overt wit, attuned perception and clever tact, Warhol is akin to everything modern and avant-garde in the twentieth century. Discovering beauty and meaning in mass culture – from advertisements to consumer brands to celebrities and the news – Warhol’s process exceeded beyond visual art, encompassing a lifestyle and process extending into the realm of life-long performance. As such, Warhol has become the predecessor to the great contemporary artists today through his innovative business strategies of self-promotion, branding and a factory-based studio. Beatle Boots, painted in 1986, is a significant work in Warhol’s expansive œuvre. Created at the very end of his career, the 1980s proved to be a highly productive decade for Warhol. With the gift of hindsight, the qualities imbedded in the present lot reflect a rather ominous yet articulate achievement. The process, the motifs and the themes that emerge from the monochromatic canvas are wholeheartedly Warholian.

Warhol popularized serigraphy in the sixties and became synonymous with the process throughout his career. The technique allowed for great versatility, excessive repetition and a visual flatness which were all qualities Warhol revered in popular imagery and appropriated for his own work. Warhol has sourced imagery from a plethora of sources from brand logos to celebrity headshots, however, for the series Black + White Paintings (to which Beatle Boots belongs), Warhol specifically sought the crude, monochrome advertisements he had collected and archived from newspapers decades before. There was an attractive wealth of possibilities that the newsprint advertisements had, despite their inherently rudimentary appearance. The attributes of the original image source translated perfectly with the silk-screened process. "The newspaper ads that most interested Warhol were graphically crude and terribly direct – aimed at the lowest common denominator, and delivered with maximum force and economy" (Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1989, p. 15)

The advertisement in the present lot, which reads: "Fans – Beatle Boots are Here!" had been sourced by Warhol from a 1960s newspaper advertisement during the height of Beatlemania. The boots, designed specifically for the Beatles, were an amalgamation of the Chelsea ankle boot with the "Cuban heel" of a flamenco boot and were instantly disseminated into wider fashion and culture with the popularity of the British group. By the 1960s, the boots had become quintessentially evocative of the band and without a doubt, appealed to Warhol on an iconographic level like the Coca-Cola bottles and the tomato soup cans. Footwear as a motif has had a significant role in Warhol’s personal history. His first commercial job was creating illustrations for the shoe company I. Miller in the fifties, and the motif was resurrected in the early 1980s with diamond dust. With Beatle Boots harking back to Warhol’s early advertisements for I. Miller, the motif and process have come full circle.

Consumerism, mass-culture and celebrity are themes integral to Warhol’s philosophy with Beatle Boots embodying all three. Warhol, transforming a minute newspaper advertisement into a billboard scale, simplifies the overall visual impact while elevating the motif. For the works in the Black + White series, the advertisements of the 1950s and 60s in particular appealed to Warhol as they were lettered and drawn by hand. Warhol later revealed that, "the process of doing work in commercial art was machine-like, but the attitude had feeling to it." (Ibid., p. 459) By the eighties, the precision of line achieved by technology had displaced the more artistic nature of advertising with which Warhol had begun his career. Beatle Boots, as a monochromatic, large-scale silkscreen, synthesizes all the recurring themes in Warhol’s prolific artistic career.
Artist Biography
Andy Warhol
American • 1928 - 1987
Andy Warhol was the leading exponent of the Pop Art movement in the U.S. in the 1960s. Following an early career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol achieved fame with his revolutionary series of silkscreened prints and paintings of familiar objects, such as Campbell's soup tins, and celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe. Obsessed with popular culture, celebrity and advertising, Warhol created his slick, seemingly mass-produced images of everyday subject matter from his famed Factory studio in New York City. His use of mechanical methods of reproduction, notably the commercial technique of silk screening, wholly revolutionized art-making.
Working as an artist, but also director and producer, Warhol produced a number of avant-garde films in addition to managing the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founding Interview magazine. A central figure in the New York art scene until his untimely death in 1987, Warhol was notably also a mentor to such artists as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

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13

Andy Warhol

Beatle Boots (Negative)

1986
synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas
203.2 x 182.9 cm (80 x 72 in )
Stamped twice by the Estate of Andy Warhol and three times with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. stamps and numbered twice ‘PA10.558’ on the overlap.

Estimate
£550,000 - 650,000 ‡

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

14 February 2013
London

1
Nate Lowman
Green Escalade
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000
Sold for £337,250
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2
Rob Pruitt
Power of the Panda (Happy Alone)
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 †
Sold for £115,250
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3
Dan Colen
A Slip of the Tongue
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £133,250
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4
Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Black and Canary Yellow Butterfly) #699
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
Sold for £457,250
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5
Rashid Johnson
Write me In
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡
Sold for £85,250
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6
Donald Judd
Untitled (91-149 Menziken)
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000
Sold for £337,250
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7
Christopher Wool
Untitled (P271)
Estimate £1,300,000 - 1,800,000 ‡
Sold for £1,665,250
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8
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Look and listen)
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000
Sold for £253,250
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9
Andy Warhol
Brillo Soap Pads Box
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡
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10
Andy Warhol
Tomato Juice Box
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £223,250
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11
Andy Warhol
Hammer and Sickle
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £247,250
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12
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled
Estimate £1,800,000 - 2,500,000 ‡
Sold for £1,945,250
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13
Andy Warhol
Beatle Boots (Negative)
Estimate £550,000 - 650,000 ‡
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14
Jean-Michel Basquiat
For B.A.M.
Estimate £1,200,000 - 1,800,000 ‡
Sold for £763,830
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15
Banksy
Bomb Middle England
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠
Sold for £229,250
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16
Jonathan Wateridge
Jungle River Landscape with Plane Wreck
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠
Sold for £109,250
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17
Albert Oehlen
Student II
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ‡♠
Sold for £169,250
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18
Jean Dubuffet
Le Chien Rodeur
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £325,250
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19
Cecily Brown
East of Eden
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £724,450
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20
Damien Hirst
Untitled 2 (Spot Painting)
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £295,250
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21
Marc Quinn
Frozen Head
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £713,250
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22
This lot is no longer available.
23
Rosemarie Trockel
Waterfall
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ♠
Sold for £361,250
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24
Richard Prince
What Can You Do?
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25
Elizabeth Peyton
Dr. Scarpinato (Vincent)
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡
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26
George Condo
Untitled (Choo Choo)
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡
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27
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #469
Estimate £180,000 - 220,000 ‡
Sold for £205,250
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28
The Bruce High Quality Foundation
Las Meninas
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ‡
Sold for £181,250
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29
Thomas Houseago
Caryatide with Squatting Man
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ♠†
Sold for £73,250
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30
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000 ‡♠
Sold for £79,250
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31
Ryan Sullivan
July 24, 2011 - September 28, 2011
Estimate £30,000 - 40,000
Sold for £91,250
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32
Mark Tansey
Study for the Valley of Doubt
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
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33
Yan Pei-Ming
Invisible Man no. 1
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
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34
Isa Genzken
Empire/Vampire
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35
Sterling Ruby
Monument Stalagmite/Headbanger
Estimate £70,000 - 100,000 †
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36
Marc Quinn
Careless Desire
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠
Sold for £157,250
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

14 February 2013 London

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Andy Warhol

13

Andy Warhol

Beatle Boots (Negative)

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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14 February 2013
London