Provenance
Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Private Collection
Christie's New York, Post War and Contemporary Art Morning Session, 16 November 2006, lot 133
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
Exhibited
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Charles H. Carpenter, Jr.: The Odyssey of a Collector, 23 March– 9 June 1996, travelled to New York, Whitney Museum of American Art
(16 January–9 March 1997)
Ridgefield, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Charles H. Carpenter, Jr. Collection: Fifty Years of Supporting the New, 22 September – 31 December 2002
Literature
I. Sandler, American Art of the 1960s, New York, 1988, no. 40 (illustrated)
Charles H. Carpenter, Jr.: The Odyssey of a Collector, exh. cat., Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 1996, p. 79 (illustrated)
G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné; Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, vol. 02A, New York, 2004, p.73 no. 631; p.75, fig.27 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
“I like things to be exactly the same over and over again.” Andy Warhol

“A truckload of wood boxes arrived, individually wrapped and taped in clear plastic sheeting. And so would begin the arduous task of taping the floor with rolls of brown paper and setting out each box in a grid-like pattern of eight rows lengthwise … Completing the work took nearly six weeks, from early February well into mid-April.”
(Gerard Malanga, Warhol’s studio assistant, in Archiving Warhol: Writings and Photographs by Gerard Malanga, 2002 (GMW147-8))

Andy Warhol’s Brillo Soap Pad Boxes were exhibited for the first time on 26 April 1964 at the Stable Gallery in New York as part of the artist’s inaugural sculptural project. The gallery space was filled from top to bottom with replicas of commonplace supermarket packaging: cans of Del Monte peach halves, Campbell tomato juice, Mott’s apple juice, Kellogg’s Cornflakes, Heinz tomato ketchup and Brillo Soap Pads boxes. The idea for the Stable Gallery show was sparked when Warhol asked his assistant Nathan Gluck to bring him cartons from the nearby grocery store. Gluck returned with some artfully-designed boxes that had contained exotic fruit. “No, no, no!”, Warhol complained, “I wanted something more ordinary.” (A. Chasin, All other things being equal: studies in U.S.-American material culture, Stanford University Press, p. 91.) Warhol then delegated another assistant to the task, who returned with the most basic examples of supermarket packaging he could find. Warhol ordered precise copies of the originals to be made in the form of plywood boxes which were then screenprinted with imitation lettering and logos. The entire Stable Gallery was then filled with these boxes, recreating the disarray of a supermarket stockroom. As the original invoice from the box carpenter shows, it can be supposed that Warhol produced one hundred Brillo Soap Pads boxes for the Stable Gallery show.

The present Brillo Soap Pad Box appears to be straight from the stockroom, still in its original plastic wrapping. A notation in the inventory of the Leo Castelli Gallery identifies the Brillo box photograph by Rudolph Burckhardt (for the publication accompanying the exhibition The Odyssey of a Collector at the Whitney Museum of Art) with LC 179, the same inventory number as the current lot. From this fact we can assume that the most-reproduced photograph of a Brillo Soap Pad Box is in fact an image of this present lot.

Warhol’s work in the early 1960s consciously destabilised the distinct domains of high culture and commercial art, but the Brillo Soap Pad boxes went a step further. They
were precise copies of the actual object in shape and colour. The art critic Sidney Tillim reviewed the exhibition in Art Magazine with the following comment: “The visual emptiness of it all is the price he seems to pay for an instant of sublime but compulsive negation” (in E. E. Dennis, R. W. Snyder, eds., Media & Public Life, New Brunswick, NJ, 1997, p. 61). This “visual emptiness” was precisely Warhol’s goal: to portray the extreme superficiality of the prosperous society in which he lived and worked.

The boxes emerged from an exciting time in Warhol’s life, just after he had moved to his new studio on 231 East 47th Street, New York, in 1963. The production setting for the Brillo Soap Pad boxes coined the name for this studio: the Factory. Warhol was no longer just an artist, he was a businessman. This statement on the structures and techniques of art production has ensured Warhol’s place as a figure of central importance in art since then.
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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9

Andy Warhol

Brillo Soap Pads Box

1964
silkscreen ink and house paint on plywood, wrapped in original plastic
43.2 x 43.2 x 35.6 cm (17 x 17 x 14 in)

Estimate
£600,000 - 800,000 ‡

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

14 February 2013
London

1
Nate Lowman
Green Escalade
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000
Sold for £337,250
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2
Rob Pruitt
Power of the Panda (Happy Alone)
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 †
Sold for £115,250
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3
Dan Colen
A Slip of the Tongue
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £133,250
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4
Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Black and Canary Yellow Butterfly) #699
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
Sold for £457,250
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5
Rashid Johnson
Write me In
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡
Sold for £85,250
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6
Donald Judd
Untitled (91-149 Menziken)
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000
Sold for £337,250
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7
Christopher Wool
Untitled (P271)
Estimate £1,300,000 - 1,800,000 ‡
Sold for £1,665,250
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8
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Look and listen)
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000
Sold for £253,250
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9
Andy Warhol
Brillo Soap Pads Box
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡
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10
Andy Warhol
Tomato Juice Box
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £223,250
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11
Andy Warhol
Hammer and Sickle
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £247,250
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12
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled
Estimate £1,800,000 - 2,500,000 ‡
Sold for £1,945,250
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13
Andy Warhol
Beatle Boots (Negative)
Estimate £550,000 - 650,000 ‡
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14
Jean-Michel Basquiat
For B.A.M.
Estimate £1,200,000 - 1,800,000 ‡
Sold for £763,830
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15
Banksy
Bomb Middle England
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠
Sold for £229,250
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16
Jonathan Wateridge
Jungle River Landscape with Plane Wreck
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠
Sold for £109,250
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17
Albert Oehlen
Student II
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ‡♠
Sold for £169,250
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18
Jean Dubuffet
Le Chien Rodeur
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £325,250
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19
Cecily Brown
East of Eden
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £724,450
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20
Damien Hirst
Untitled 2 (Spot Painting)
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £295,250
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21
Marc Quinn
Frozen Head
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £713,250
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22
This lot is no longer available.
23
Rosemarie Trockel
Waterfall
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ♠
Sold for £361,250
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24
Richard Prince
What Can You Do?
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡
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25
Elizabeth Peyton
Dr. Scarpinato (Vincent)
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡
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26
George Condo
Untitled (Choo Choo)
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡
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27
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #469
Estimate £180,000 - 220,000 ‡
Sold for £205,250
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28
The Bruce High Quality Foundation
Las Meninas
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 ‡
Sold for £181,250
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29
Thomas Houseago
Caryatide with Squatting Man
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ♠†
Sold for £73,250
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30
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000 ‡♠
Sold for £79,250
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31
Ryan Sullivan
July 24, 2011 - September 28, 2011
Estimate £30,000 - 40,000
Sold for £91,250
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32
Mark Tansey
Study for the Valley of Doubt
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
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33
Yan Pei-Ming
Invisible Man no. 1
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡♠
Sold for £163,250
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34
Isa Genzken
Empire/Vampire
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ♠
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35
Sterling Ruby
Monument Stalagmite/Headbanger
Estimate £70,000 - 100,000 †
Sold for £85,250
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36
Marc Quinn
Careless Desire
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠
Sold for £157,250
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

14 February 2013 London

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Andy Warhol

9

Andy Warhol

Brillo Soap Pads Box

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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14 February 2013
London