Andy Warhol - Contemporary Art Part II New York Tuesday, November 9, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    The Andy Warhol Foundation, New York; Wooster Projects, New York; Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York; Private Collection

  • Literature


    F. Feldman and J. Schellman, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1987, Fourth Edition, Milan, 2003, p. 250, no. IIIA.58 (illustrated in color)

  • Catalogue Essay

    The present lot is one in a series of Warhol prints based on the work of Scandinavian painter Edvard Munch. This print, a brightly colored interpretation of the famous Edvard Munch canvas The Scream, highlights Warhol’s Pop aesthetic as well as his practice of appropriating the work of other artists. This work is an example of how Warhol, celebrated for his portraits of American celebrities like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Marilyn Monroe in bright, sharp colors, rendered “celebrities” of the art world, such as the Mona Lisa, in a similar graphic style.
    Through his presentation of The Scream as a reproducible printed image, Warhol labels the painting both an icon and a commercial product. Executing an army of copies of “The Scream” enables Warhol to strip away the expressivity, individuality, and intense emotion that make the painting unique. As such, he cements its role as a masterpiece worth replicating, but also transforms it into a mass-produced commodity of his own creation.
    Is Andy Warhol’s The Scream better than Edvard Munch’s? Is it more up-to-date in its expression – and does it therefore have a better chance as statement, as communicative gesture? Does Warhol borrow cultural authority from Munch or has he simply become resigned to the recognition that he cannot himself have an idea? Is Warhol a cultural conservative who thinks it is important to repeat the classics of art history, or does he destroy them in order to carve a place for himself in the firmament? What is it that he does?
    One can further discuss whether and to what degree Munch’s lithograph and Warhol’s After Munch screenprints offer the same aesthetic experience. In view of the distinctness of a screenprint from a lithograph, of the large from the small format, and of the colouration from the (mostly) black and white, as well as the added lines, the nature of the aesthetic appreciation differs greatly. Warhol, with his exuberant use of brilliant hues and his disregard of imitative colour in the representation of objects, was a colour composer of outstanding aesthetic merit. Color, on its own merits, became a subject in Warhol’s screenprints.
    (M. Juul Holm and H. Dedichen, Warhol After Munch, Denmark 2010)

  • 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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257

The Scream (after Munch)

1984

Screenprint in a unique combination of colors.

40 x 32 in. (101.6 x 81.3 cm).

Stamped by The Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, Inc., and numbered on the reverse.

Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000 

Sold for $242,500

Contemporary Art Part II

9 November 2010
New York