Andy Warhol’s Gem from 1979 exemplifies the iconic artist’s preoccupation with the glitz of glamour and money, commercialism, religious iconography and the very nature of painting itself. The gemstone, carved out of the monochromatic background by silkscreened diamond dust, shimmers like a ghostly spectre, a mirage of opulence and materialistic luxury. Having been introduced to the perfect type of diamond dust by Rupert Smith in 1979, Warhol began using the decadently-named material - in reality simply powered glass - within his screenprints, creating lustrous works that captured and projected the essence of both the sublime and the faux-luxury commercialism sweeping society. This diamond-dust gem cleverly imitates a real gem by only becoming visible when seen from the right angle as the light falls upon it - a metaphor for the superficiality of extravagant consumerism.

The deliberate vagueness and enigma of this work is a feature that Warhol was also developing at the time in his series of ‘Shadow’ paintings. Originally conceived as a single monumental work, the initial paintings in this series comprise an expansive 102 canvases in 17 different colour ways. These were works that similarly played with the dramatic contrasts between figuration and abstraction, light and shadow, and perceptibility and invisibility. Commenting on this series, Gregory Volk noted that ‘these paintings accentuate their status as artifices, or painting devices, and dispense with Abstract Expressionism’s claims to originality and transcendent beauty. However, they still retain an aura of the sublime… something of awe-inspiring beauty…’ (Gregory Volk, ‘The Late, Great Andy Warhol’, In: Wisconsin, Milwaukee Art Museum, Andy Warhol, the last decade, October 2010 - January 2011, p. 81).

Now instantly recognisable as a Warhol calling card, the gemstone became one of Warhol’s great iconographic choices, a successor to the long line of materialist icons that stretched from the early Soup Cans and Electric Chairs to the celebrity portraits and skulls of the 1970s. In Gem, Warhol melded his iconic motif with this new approach to painting, creating a dazzling representation of seductive vulgarity. A celestially compact abbreviation of this important series, the present work revels in Warhol’s psuedo-sardonic fascination with abstract pattern, whilst aesthetically navigating a continued and complex relationship with the transience of glitz and glamour.

The son of Slovakian immigrants born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 6 August 1928, Andy Warhol pioneered a combination of avant-garde and highly commercial sensibilities that made him a founder and leading figure of Pop Art. Starting in the early 1960s, his work explored the relationship between advertising, fame and artistic expression through media including painting, silkscreen, sculpture, film and photography. With work that simultaneously satirised and celebrated materiality and fame and a voyeuristic personality with a clear taste for money and fame, Warhol shaped many subsequent generations of artists.