Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol with Portrait of Princess Diana and Portrait of Prince Charles, 1982. Image: © Christopher Makos, Artwork: © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by DACS, London.
Whenever something major happens today, culture seems to quickly settle on the most iconic image that represents it, and that image suddenly shows up everywhere. Just think of recent political events. After they occur, their representative image is published across countless news publications and on each of their various media channels. Try swiping from app to app, or even pick up a printed publication, and you still can’t avoid it. Such images then often turn into memes which are shared by individual users on social media platforms, and before we can blink, the images are burned into our collective consciousness. Such is the power of an image’s repetition and proliferation, a power that both Andy Warhol and the British Royal Family knew all too well in the early 1980s — seemingly before anyone else.
Left: Lot 11: Andy Warhol, Portrait of Princess Diana, 1982. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Right: Lot 12: Andy Warhol, Portrait of Prince Charles, 1982. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Coming to auction together for the first time, having previously been held in the esteemed collection of author and Conservative deputy chairman Jeffrey Archer, Andy Warhol’s portraits of Princess Diana and then-Prince Charles exemplify this keen understanding of the relationship between image and power that was shared by both Warhol and the Royal Family. Here, we explore how the repetition of imagery can amplify its message and create a lasting impact, both within Warhol’s distinctive practice and within visual culture at large.
With only four Princess Diana works created in this format, Phillips is proud to offer these rare works at the upcoming Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London. What’s more, drawings by Warhol that were made in preparation for the silkscreen portraits are also on offer in the Day Sale, offering visitors to Phillips’ 30 Berkely Square gallery the rare opportunity to glimpse a nearly complete sense of the artist’s process, and revealing the repetition within it.
I: An Iconic Engagement Photo
Already a sensation in the press before its official televised announcement, the courtship and subsequent engagement of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer sent waves through the media and, one can imagine, surely caught the attention of Andy Warhol. As the Royal family sought to shift the perception of the monarchy to be more in line with the optimism and hope for change that was ringing throughout British culture in the 1980s, Prince Charles would have been aware of the impact an image could have when disseminated across all the available media platforms of the day. To this end, Lord Snowden’s official engagement photograph was released following the announcement, and one suspects that the overwhelming response from the public must have surprised everyone associated with the crown.
Lord Snowdon, Official Engagement portrait of Charles and Diana, 1981. Image: © Snowdon / Camera Press.
In Lord Snowden’s photograph, the promising couple is pictured with casual ease and glamour that global audiences perceived as the dawn of a new chapter for the British Monarchy. Diana appears youthful and beautiful, Charles empowered and protective. As a public display of Royal power, the photograph places emphasis on certain symbols to reinforce this message: Diana’s jewels and engagement ring; Charles’ naval regalia; the choice of certain colors. One can’t help but perceive the connotations of health, youth, fertility, and renewal from Diana’s green gown and the implication of Charles’ blue-blooded pedigree represented by the color of his coat — each echoed in the portraits on offer here. Taking in the original image today, it’s clear to see how much was there for Andy Warhol to unpack from his characteristic viewpoint.
II: From Photograph to Drawing
Andy Warhol, Princess Diana, circa 1982, Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, London.
Having begun his career by making drawings for advertisements, primarily for women’s shoes, Andy Warhol would have gained a keen understanding of how repeated imagery latches onto our memories. We see this in the use of repetition in his practice, both within a single composition and across several, which were often issued as multiples. However, with this shift away from commercial work, Warhol also moved away from drawing, making no drawings at all between 1963 and 1972. In an Artforum review of the Kunstmuseum Basel exhibition Andy Warhol: Drawings, 1942–87, Arthur C. Danto offers that Warhol had “not really found a way of reconciling two philosophies of art — or two philosophies of being — exemplified in the tension between the expressivity of urgent scribbles and the deadpan, photo-mechanical look that had become his signature style.” But here, in these traced drawings made in preparation for the silkscreen portraits, we recognize a sense of line that is iconically Warholian. And indeed, we see how Warhol’s settled sense of line impacts the expressive majesty of the ultimate silkscreen portraits.
“Unquestionably the great American draughtsman of the latter half of the century.”
—Jeffrey Archer on Andy Warhol
Already in these drawings, we can see how Warhol takes distinct visual icons of beauty and power — their perfect hair, her priceless jewels, his naval awards, her youthful, plump lips and doe-like eyes — and renders them as almost independent graphic elements. In both the drawings and the silkscreens, these elements come together to create the final image and its web of influence and innocence, but even if considered in isolation, each visual element exudes an enviable power.
Andy Warhol, Prince Charles, circa 1982. Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, London.
Cropped like two actors’ headshots, Warhol separates the figures, homing in on their distinct and separate meanings as cultural figures. This decision is made further poignant from our viewpoint today, knowing the tragic end of the subjects’ story. These drawings offer significant insight into Warhol’s process, but there’s also historical serendipity here. Just as the Royal Family allowed this engagement photograph to be disseminated as if it were a Hollywood advertisement for an upcoming film, Andy Warhol, in a sense, returns to his roots, at work with a pencil and what could be considered a kind of advertising imagery.
III: From Sketch to Silkscreen
Andy Warhol, Portrait of Prince Charles, 1982. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Executed with Warhol’s mature sense of bold lines and neon colors, these silkscreens brought the art historical tradition of royal portraiture to its apex. At this moment in time, Warhol is exploring this type of imagery and all its symbolic associations with the concepts of power, sovereignty, and socio-political stability, but he’s also keenly aware of the ways in which our conception of this imagery may shift as modern technology affords all classes access to an image-saturated environment. Historically, Royal imagery would have been carefully controlled, appearing only on currency and in official public displays, but by the early 1980s, imagery of Royals proliferated through news reports and paparazzi photographs, to say nothing of the portable image machines we carry in our pockets today. Representative of this crucial shift in visual culture, the couple’s televised wedding remains the most viewed televised wedding in history.
Belonging to the past, [Diana] persists in the present, transformed by an artificial, superimposed veneer.
—Paul Moorhouse
Andy Warhol, Portrait of Princess Diana, 1982. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, London.
Together, Charles and Diana appear almost doll-like in these portraits, presented as visual objects fit for public consumption. Warhol’s treatment of them aligns with Diana’s celebrity status and the public’s demand for access to the couple, rendering in image what this cultural moment felt like for many — Charles and Diana seemed close to us, closer than any Royal figures before. Created at a seminal moment in the development of Warhol’s late style, the simplified imagery and exploration of fame, political weight, social hierarchy, and cultural consumption foreshadows nearly the rest of Warhol’s career, including the Reigning Queens series produced three years later.
IV: An Enduring and Warholian Appeal
In comparing the dissemination of the official photograph to that of Hollywood movie posters, we also touch upon a significant idea that can be gleaned from these works. Warhol’s visual mix of clout and purity showcases two people who, like actors, are forced to play a role. In Charles’ case, a role he inherited by birth, and in Diana’s, a role thrust upon her. For as much power as they each have, perhaps they also possess an identifiable lack of agency, which may help explain why this imagery and story has continued to resonate through continued repetition, from books and cultural commentary to the later seasons of the lauded Netflix series The Crown.
These works represent a crucial moment in contemporary visual culture as we know it. After all, particularly when it comes to weddings and engagement announcements, many of us seem to run a similar playbook for the repetition of imagery from our own lives. Today, one thinks of how we circulate digital images of important moments in our lives and their subsequent resharing and proliferation on social media, or even the so-called “main character syndrome” trend making waves across certain networks. Indeed, the story of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles is as Warholian as the imagery of contemporary life. Through its repetition and our own participation, we unpack this notion further with each passing year, but these works show that to the King of Pop, it was inevitable all along.
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