112
Andy Warhol
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, from Reigning Queens (F. & S. 339)
- Estimate
- £15,000 - 20,000‡
Further Details
In 1985, the American Pop artist Andy Warhol turned his attention to royalty and embarked on his largest portfolio of screenprints, entitled the Reigning Queens series. The series features the four female monarchs who reigned at the time, having assumed their thrones by birthright alone: Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and Queen Ntfombi Tfwala of Swaziland. In depicting some of the world’s most recognisable female figures and appropriating their most widely circulated images, the series encapsulates Warhol’s fascination with fame, mass-media, and the extremes of social hierarchy. Based on official or media photographs of these monarchs, the screenprint portfolio consists of four colour variants of each queen, amounting to sixteen images in total. The screenprints were created using a photographic silkscreen technique central to Warhol’s practice, employed profusely in both his prints and paintings.
Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix reigned as Queen of the Netherlands from 1980 until she abdicated in favour of her eldest son, the current King Willem-Alexander, in 2013. Beatrix comes from a line of reigning queens, succeeding her mother, Queen Juliana (reigned 1948-1980), who in turn succeeded Queen Wilhelmina (reigned 1890-1948), Beatrix’s maternal grandmother. Warhol’s screenprint appropriates an official portrait of Queen Beatrix taken during the celebrations for her inauguration. Beatrix is pictured wearing Queen Emma’s Diamond Tiara, thought to be her favourite due to the frequency with which she selected it for royal engagements. The tiara itself is also a rich symbol of female power within the Dutch monarchy. Originally commissioned for Beatrix’s great-grandmother, it has passed down through the three subsequent generations of reigning queens. In addition to referencing this emblem of ruling women in the Dutch monarchy, Warhol also adds graphic shapes of flat colour to his portrait of Queen Beatrix – an intervention that became more frequent in the artist’s work from the mid-1970s. In this way, Warhol perfectly balances tradition with modernity, rendering Princess Beatrix as a monarch poised between the regalia of Dutch monarchical history and the consumer culture of the twentieth century.
Full-Cataloguing
Andy Warhol
American | B. 1928 D. 1987Andy 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.