Andy Warhol - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Tuesday, November 12, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York

  • Exhibited

    New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Andy Warhol: Portraits, May 12 - October 1, 2005

  • Literature

    T. Shafrazi, Andy Warhol: Portraits, New York: Phaidon, 2007, pp. 6-7 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” (Andy Warhol in, T. Shafrazi, Andy Warhol: Portraits, New York: Phaidon, 2007, p. 17). Warhol’s iconic 40 x 40 inch portraits from the mid-1980s collate to provide a glamourized yearbook of socialites, friends, dealers and tycoons; the collection of portraits ultimately comprises a rolodex of the icons of the late 20th century. Through his crisp screens and vibrant palette, Warhol renders each seemingly recognizable face into a fresh and dazzling portrait. Each sitter, regardless of their prominence or popularity, is submitted to Warhol’s process; his process of transformation, production and idealization.

    In the present lot, Cindy Pritzker, wife of Jay Pritzker, founder of the Hyatt hotel chain, is portrayed in a light untouched by the photographic truth of which her image originates. Her depiction is ageless; a Barbielike beauty bedecked in the perfect wet inks of Warhol’s technique. Her eyes are delicately painted with crystal blue pigments, contrasting greatly with the bright red inks that comprise her ever slight smile. Her coifure is rendered in a perfect buttercup yellow, almost blending with the creamy backdrop which she stands before. Warhol removes the sort of facets that provide a photograph with its absolute integrity; suppressing, extracting, and standardizing Mrs. Pritzker’s head shot into a graphic surface of forceful individuality. “His portraits transformed aging socialites into Venus de Milos, and their industrialist husbands into Florentine Davids—or at least, into Hollywood facsimiles thereof…” (Bob Colacello in, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, New York: Harper Collins, 1990, p. 89).

  • 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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PROPERTY FROM A PROMINENT COLLECTION

188

Mrs. Pritzker

1982
synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas
40 x 40 in. (101.6 x 101.6 cm.)
Signed and dated "Andy Warhol 82" along the overlap; further stamped twice with The Estate of Andy Warhol and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. and numbered "P050.090" along the overlap.

Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000 

Sold for $293,000

Contact Specialist
Amanda Stoffel
Head of Day Sale
astoffel@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1261

Contemporary Art Day Sale

New York 12 November 2013 11AM