Andy Warhol - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 15, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    The Estate of Andy Warhol, New York; Stellan Holm Gallery, New York; Private collection, Korea; O’Hara Gallery, Inc., New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    For every famed photograph Andy Warhol chose to emblazon on canvas, the image soon became a fixture in the lexicon of American Pop, a symbol not only of Warhol’s cunning but also of his ability to conjure in the mental framework of a global audience a sense of fame and publicity. Displaying a truly Midas touch, it is as if that which Warhol created, immediately rendered fame, and it is the artist’s aptitude in this arena which has earned him the reputation of his generation’s tastemaker. His own fame, ultimately, was the art itself and a work such as the present lot, Gun, created from 1981-1982, can best be taken as a reinterpretation of a violent period in the artist’s life. Surviving a very nearly death by gunshot just prior to the creation of the Guns and Knives series, Warhol identifies with a deep violent trend in the American psyche. Just with his celebrity portraits, Warhol snapped Polaroids of the ‘models’, the guns themselves, and through depicting them in hyper color and refashioned contexts, conjured an iconic expression of the engineering behind the machine itself. Further, Warhol’s abstraction of this daily reality, the violent acts brought on by handgun accidents, is a testament to his Catholic faith and value system, drawing attention to them even in such deconstructed, figural means all the while highlights the principles behind the project. A work such as Gun displays Warhol’s famous capacities at commentary and artistic reflection.

  • 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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11

Guns

circa 1981-1982
Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink and on canvas.
16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm).

Stamped with the Estate and Foundation seals and numbered “PA15.041” on the overlap.
This work is accompanied by a photo certificate issued byThe AndyWarhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Estimate
$500,000 - 700,000 

Sold for $541,000

Contemporary Art Part I

15 Nov 2007, 7pm
New York