Andy Warhol - Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Friday, October 11, 2024 | Phillips
  • “Kiddo was his nickname for me. He called the apartment at least once a day and on occasions when I answered the phone, he’d always take the time to ask about pop culture in my pre-teen (and, later, teenage) world before asking: ‘Is your Pops there?’”
    —Berkeley Reinhold
    Andy Warhol used portraiture to immortalise the icons of his time allowing his audience a timelessly passive glimpse into twentieth century popular culture. However, Berkeley Reinhold, encapsulates Warhol’s sentimental side. Berkeley was the 10-year-old daughter of the artist’s friend John Reinhold, who was a diamond dealer and art collector living and working in New York. Warhol and Reinhold developed a fast and close friendship. Outside of their weekly trips to Studio 54, the pair phoned one another several times a day. Reinhold supplied Warhol with diamond dust for his paintings whilst Warhol signed a Cambell’s soup can for Berkeley’s art teachers in attempt to raise her grades. For Reinhold, ‘knowing Andy definitely changed the course of my life, no question about it.’ i

     
    Berkeley’s tilted head and sulky expression emphasised by the strikingly contrasting lipstick chosen for her at The Factory for her photoshoot offers a universally nostalgic image of early adolescence. Warhol planned to produce an annual portrait of her across a 10-year period. In contrast to his serial portraits of figures such as Marilyn Monroe or Jackie Kennedy which encapsulate the repetitive nature of contemporary mass production, Warhol’s project for Berkeley relies patiently on the passage of time to capture the sitter’s changes during a formative and transformative period of her life. In this way, the work echoes his minimalist Screen Tests of the 1960s. These slow, silent black-and-white films presented their subjects as ‘living’ portraits, evoking an enchantingly subdued yet powerful mode of expression which evolves over the course of their duration.


    However, the present work is the first and only work from this planned project as Berkeley – preoccupied with ‘boys, friends and school’ – sat only once for Warhol.ii Perpetually frozen as an endearingly pouty pre-teen, the present work is both a testament to Warhol’s unique ability to create enduring, striking portraiture and a deeply intimate gesture of friendship, care and generosity towards the Reinhold family.
     

     

    i John Reinhold, quoted in ‘Knowing Andy’, NeueJournal, 9 June 2021, online

    ii Berkeley Reinhold, ‘Experience: I was painted by Andy Warhol’, The Guardian, 6 January 2013, online

    • Condition Report

    • Description

      View our Conditions of Sale.

    • Provenance

      Acquired directly from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. by the present owner

    • Literature

      Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1987, New York, 2003, no. IIIC.41 [b], p. 300 (illustrated)

    • 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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225

Berkeley Reinhold

stamped with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. stamp on the reverse
screenprint on paper
sheet 79.2 x 60.3 cm (31 1/8 x 23 3/4 in.)
Executed circa 1979.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 

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Simon Tovey
Director, Head of Day Sale, London
+44 7502 428 688
stovey@phillips.com

 

 

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 11 October 2024