Andy Warhol

Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Vence
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1997

Vence, Galerie Beaubourg, Potraits de Femmes, 1994, p. 66, illustrated

Manuel Jover, 'Le voleur d'images', Paris: Beaux Arts Hors Série, Paris 1990, p. 10, illustrated (reversed)
Georg Frei & Neil Printz, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 2A, Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, New York 2004, p. 186, no. 1099, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the grey-beige of the background tends more towards an extremely pale delicate grey in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is a small canvas indentation with some associated tiny fine cracks just above the centre of the lower edge and a minute spot of wear to the lower left corner tip. Parallel horizontal stretcher bar marks are visble intermittently to the canvas above the lower extreme edge and there are a few extremely light handli marks in places along the lower edge. Close examination reveals a fine hairline tension crack to the lower part of the right extreme overturn edge and a tiny speck of paint loss to the lower right extreme corner tip. There are a few further fine hairline stable tension cracks at intervals to the extreme overturn edges. Upon very close inspection in raking light there is a tiny brown media accretion beneath the black pigment to the top part of the lower right quadrant. A fine vertical rub mark is visible just above the centre of the left edge. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light, though two spots of inconsistent media fluoresce at the top of the lower left quadrant.
"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.
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Shrouded in a veil of black ink, her features defined by dramatic shards of light and shadow, Jackie is captured serene and tragically beautiful at her husband's funeral. Character and humanity lie in the imperfections of the screen, where the inky printing marks, cropped image and soft focus give texture and historical authenticity to this iconic image. The monochrome palette echoes the visual language of the newspaper, the television screen and the documentary photograph, allowing Warhol to transcend the emotive border between private grief and the shared experience of public history.

 

 

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on the 22 November 1963.  Two days later his burial took place at the Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington D.C. While the route of the cortege was lined with 800,000 mourners, broadcasting agencies and news editors assembled their valedictory testimonials to a hero. As an entire population sank into the shared psychosis of bereavement, the media's carefully choreographed narration precipitated one of the most prodigious critiques of mass communication ever conceived. 

 

 

Warhol followed the unfolding events on television and decided soon afterwards to create a series of paintings based around the assassination. He spent weeks scouring press photographs, choosing the figure of Jackie Kennedy as the main focus for the series. Of the reams of images published in the national press, Warhol eventually selected eight portraits of Jackie, cropping each to about three and a half by three inches. They were cut from photographs showing the arrival of the Kennedys in Dallas, Lyndon B. Johnson's swearing-in as President on board Air Force One after the assassination, and scenes from J.F.K.'s funeral.  Warhol ordered a screen for the eight photographs together, in which each image was enlarged to twenty by sixteen inches, so that the entire mechanical was eighty inches high. There was also a second mechanical of the layout in reverse and the screen manufacturer was directed, "Please make like in line very black and white". This saturation of inks achieved the highest tonal contrast, embodying the unequivocal black and white absolutism of global fame.  

 

 

Through the process of selection, manipulation and repetition of his chosen images, Warhol moved further and further away from the actual event of Kennedy's assassination and the episodes that followed. The resulting Jackies form a more generalised study of human emotion: happiness, grief and final dignity. Confronted with the intoxicating synthesis of celebrity and death, Warhol sanitized the zeitgeist through his screens of replicated then multiplied images, undermining the manipulative power of mass media. Robert Pincus-Witten compared Warhol's artistic process as akin to a religious rite, a 'Mass of repetition, monotonously intoned, unto the heavenly measurelessness inherent to the grid and/or serial format - the same image over and over again, stretching away to infinity" (Robert Pincus-Witten, Women of Warhol: Marilyn, Liz and Jackie, New York 2000, n.p.).

 

For Warhol, the genre of portraiture became a form of biography. The distilled emotions of America's first lady are enshrined on canvas in an image which captures the private side of a very public event. Captured in the stark monochrome of black and white, here Jackie is immortalized as a timeless and tragic heroine, whose very image recalls one of the twentieth century's defining moments.