- 196
Andy Warhol
Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 GBP
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Description
- Andy Warhol
- Madonna and Self-Portrait with Skeleton's Arm (After Munch)
- stamped by The Estate of Andy Warhol and The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, New York, and numbered U.P 35.40 on the reverse
- silkscreen ink on paper
- 81.3 by 101.6cm.; 32 by 40in.
- Executed in 1984.
Provenance
Rupert Jasen Smith, New York
Galerie Hilger, Vienna
Private Collection, Vienna
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Galerie Hilger, Vienna
Private Collection, Vienna
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Literature
Frayda Feldman and Jorg Schellmann, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1987, New York, 2003, p. 253, no. IIIA.62, illustration of other unique variants in colour
Condition
Colour:
The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate.
Condition:
This work is in very good condition. The sheet is attached verso to the backing board in several places. Close inspection in raking light reveals evidence of extremely light handling in a few isolated places along the horizontal edges.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
Among Warhol’s most powerful and enigmatic works, Madonna and Self-Portrait with Skeleton’s Arm (After Munch) embodies and transcends Warhol’s archetypal appropriation of popular culture icons. The left half of the work is occupied by a nude female figure with cascading hair swirling around her thrown-back head, her sinuous body half-immersed in a spiralling nimbus. Mirroring this ecstatic apparition is Edvard Munch’s haunting self-portrait, an illuminated head set against a velvety black background, staring out of the darkness. Warhol’s choice and pairing of the two motifs, far from being random, make this work one of the most complex within his canonical oeuvre.
In 1971, Warhol took a tour of Oslo’s museums and art galleries with Per Hovdenakk, then director of the Henie-Onstad Art Centre. Hovdenakk recalls Warhol’s great interest and enthusiasm for Munch’s printing technique at the Munch Museum, and as a parting gift gave Warhol a copy of Rolf Stenersen’s biography Edvard Munch: Close-up of a Genius. To a narcissist like Warhol, Stenersen’s highly romanticized version of the Norwegian artist’s childhood illness, losses and suffering then ascension to the status of the greatest printmaker of the Nineteenth Century fin-de-siècle must have seemed like a mythologized retelling of his own life - and, as for everything else he deemed iconic, needed to own it.
An avid image collector, Warhol would come to own five of Munch’s prints, including a signed impression of Self-Portrait. Executed in 1895, Self-Portrait was one of Munch’s first lithographic prints and one of his most compelling. Immersed in dense obscurity, the face’s delicate features contrast sharply with the much bolder lines of the artist’s hair. The white collar, reminiscent of clerical attire, further heightens the eerily mystical atmosphere of the work whilst the thin skeletal arm, cautiously placed at the bottom of the composition, is a reminder of the artist’s own mortality but also resembles a vanitas, the customary skull in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Northern European still lifes. Translated from Latin as 'emptiness', the vanitas symbolizes the meaninglessness and transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits.
Around the same time as Self-Portrait, Munch started working on what would arguably become one his most widely reproduced and reworked motifs, the Madonna. Originally called Woman Making Love, Madonna was among Munch’s very first intaglio prints. The perspective, as if the beholder was seeing the nude figure lying down from above, and use of symbols such as spermatozoa and the foetus, suggest intimacy: “The woman, on the verge of the most sacred consummation, illuminated by a ray of light, attains a moment of celestial beauty. The male lover who is allowed to experience such a sight might easily have a vision of a Madonna” (Frank Servaes in: Stanislaw Przybyszwski, Ed., Das Werk des Edvard Munch: Vier Beiträge, Berlin, 1894, p. 48).
Reproduced many times in many different mediums and formats - at first by Munch himself, but then relayed by popular culture in the form of posters, gift shop mugs, calendars and so forth, Munch's Madonna and Self-Portrait had already became mass-repeated icons by Warhol’s time. An image about images, the present work epitomises Warhol’s remarkable feat of using available pictures from consumer culture as readymades, to ultimately instate - or, in this case, re-instate - them within the realm of high art. Superimposed with Warhol’s maximalist aesthetic, jagged lines and garish colours, Munch’s ominous and riveting works, thus appropriated as Warholian celebrity portraits, become Pop icons. “It is really a remarkably complex work” (Roland Augustine cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Scandinavia House, Munch/Warhol and the Multiple Image, 2013, p. 33).
In 1971, Warhol took a tour of Oslo’s museums and art galleries with Per Hovdenakk, then director of the Henie-Onstad Art Centre. Hovdenakk recalls Warhol’s great interest and enthusiasm for Munch’s printing technique at the Munch Museum, and as a parting gift gave Warhol a copy of Rolf Stenersen’s biography Edvard Munch: Close-up of a Genius. To a narcissist like Warhol, Stenersen’s highly romanticized version of the Norwegian artist’s childhood illness, losses and suffering then ascension to the status of the greatest printmaker of the Nineteenth Century fin-de-siècle must have seemed like a mythologized retelling of his own life - and, as for everything else he deemed iconic, needed to own it.
An avid image collector, Warhol would come to own five of Munch’s prints, including a signed impression of Self-Portrait. Executed in 1895, Self-Portrait was one of Munch’s first lithographic prints and one of his most compelling. Immersed in dense obscurity, the face’s delicate features contrast sharply with the much bolder lines of the artist’s hair. The white collar, reminiscent of clerical attire, further heightens the eerily mystical atmosphere of the work whilst the thin skeletal arm, cautiously placed at the bottom of the composition, is a reminder of the artist’s own mortality but also resembles a vanitas, the customary skull in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Northern European still lifes. Translated from Latin as 'emptiness', the vanitas symbolizes the meaninglessness and transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits.
Around the same time as Self-Portrait, Munch started working on what would arguably become one his most widely reproduced and reworked motifs, the Madonna. Originally called Woman Making Love, Madonna was among Munch’s very first intaglio prints. The perspective, as if the beholder was seeing the nude figure lying down from above, and use of symbols such as spermatozoa and the foetus, suggest intimacy: “The woman, on the verge of the most sacred consummation, illuminated by a ray of light, attains a moment of celestial beauty. The male lover who is allowed to experience such a sight might easily have a vision of a Madonna” (Frank Servaes in: Stanislaw Przybyszwski, Ed., Das Werk des Edvard Munch: Vier Beiträge, Berlin, 1894, p. 48).
Reproduced many times in many different mediums and formats - at first by Munch himself, but then relayed by popular culture in the form of posters, gift shop mugs, calendars and so forth, Munch's Madonna and Self-Portrait had already became mass-repeated icons by Warhol’s time. An image about images, the present work epitomises Warhol’s remarkable feat of using available pictures from consumer culture as readymades, to ultimately instate - or, in this case, re-instate - them within the realm of high art. Superimposed with Warhol’s maximalist aesthetic, jagged lines and garish colours, Munch’s ominous and riveting works, thus appropriated as Warholian celebrity portraits, become Pop icons. “It is really a remarkably complex work” (Roland Augustine cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Scandinavia House, Munch/Warhol and the Multiple Image, 2013, p. 33).