Andy Warhol - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Friday, May 17, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private Collection, Florida
    Porro & Co. Art Consulting, Milan
    Private Collection, Milan

  • Catalogue Essay

    Andy Warhol’s transition into the 1980s was marked by his work’s sudden surge in two particular areas. The first was nostalgia, triggered by a long career verging into its fourth decade. The second was the result of an external force: the 1980s brought a wave of glamor in fashion unequaled since the early days of Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly. Warhol chose to ride this wave in the only way that he knew how—as a trendsetter. His work soon took on a notably fashionable bent, featuring bright and bold combinations of color unseen in past canvasses. In addition, Warhol looked elsewhere for his subjects. Suddenly the 1980s’ aura of materialism granted an iconographic power to objects themselves, as opposed to the human icons that Warhol had immortalized in decades past.

    Fashion—Two Female Torsos with Necklaces, circa 1983, is a perfect embodiment of two of the styles of its day: aesthetic neutrality and the costumed flash of exaggerated ornamentation. Warhol’s silkscreen is fashioned from two photographs of the same subject taken from different angles. The clothing and decorative jewelry of the model evokes the earliest days of modern vogue, where sexual crossover was a standard feature of the fashion world. The immaculately bleached white skin and large shoulder pads of the subject provide competing narratives: that of a French aristocratic sense of beauty and that of a modern businesswoman. This contradiction was an inherent feature of 1980s fashion, where the model was a product of multiple trends and multiple eras. In addition, Warhol draws special attention to the anonymous shape of his figure, outlined in a series of bright reds, blues, and golds. The necklaces, undoubtedly the most severe feature on the model, are emblematic of the era in which Warhol created his painting: extravagant, illuminated, and, of course, finished.

  • 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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139

Fashion - Two Female Torsos with Necklaces

circa 1983
synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas
20 x 32 in. (50.8 x 81.3 cm.)
Stamped by The Estate of Andy Warhol and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and numbered PA73.002 and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

Estimate
$180,000 - 220,000 

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

Contemporary Art Day Sale

New York 17 May 2013 10am