Andy Warhol - Contemporary Art Day Sale London Wednesday, October 15, 2014 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles
    Private Collection, Los Angeles

  • Exhibited

    Beverly Hills, Gagosian Gallery, Andy Warhol: $, 1 November – 29 November 1997

  • Literature

    A.C. Danto, Andy Warhol: $, Gagosian Gallery: Beverly Hills, 1997, p 43 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Among Warhol’s most powerful images, Dollar Sign distils the Pop artist’s oeuvre into a single, resonant image. Painted in 1981, when the artist was a tastemaker and icon in his own right, the present lot epitomises Warhol’s prophetic understanding of commodity. Dollar Sign combines deliberately crass strokes with the seductive curves of the dollar sign, manifesting the duality of material want. The silkscreen technique playfully parallels the physical printing of money; in Dollar Sign, the artist unabashedly confronts us with our own desire.

  • 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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156

Dollar Sign

1981
synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas
50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 15 7/8 in.)

Stamped by The Estate of Andy Warhol and The Andy Warhol Foundation on the overlap and the reverse. Numbered 'PA30.082' on the stretcher and overlap.

Estimate
£175,000 - 220,000 

Sold for £206,500

Contact Specialist
Henry Highley
Head of Day Sale

+44 207 318 4061

Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 16 October 2014 2pm