Andy Warhol

Estate of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York
Thomas Ammann Fine Art, AG, Zurich
Private Collection, Switzerland

Weserburg, Museum für moderne Kunst, Farbe im Fluss, September 2011 - January 2012, p. 172, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of light wear and handling marks along the edges and at the corners. Under Ultraviolet light inspection, no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
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In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol, a burgeoning young artist in New York, was just becoming famous for his silkscreened canvases of pop cultural imagery, yet a single foray in 1962 remained with the artist until his late career in 1978. It was in 1962 that Andy Warhol experimented with his first “Piss Painting,” where he urinated on a canvas, yet he abandoned this method entirely until the late 1970s, when he embarked upon a series of “oxidation paintings,” such as the present work, Oxidation Painting from 1978. For this series of works, Warhol would choose Factory-goers or assistants to urinate on canvases that he pre-coated in copper paint, which oxidizes when in contact with urine. Ronnie Cutrone described the scene in the Factory as “almost a sort of performance. Like an Yves Klein kind of thing; with women rolling on the canvas. We would instead bring in boys and girls and have them standing on the big canvases. So the studio would become like a toilet, a giant urinal.” (Ronnie Cutrone in Andy Warhol: The Late Work, p. 92)

Unlike his typical style of premeditated, mechanically printed silkscreens, the Oxidation Paintings were each completely unique. Here, Warhol had no preexisting template to work from, he simply directed his helpers and let chance take hold. The body, therefore, became the paintbrush with which he created. The Oxidation canvases are characterized by dramatic splashes, energetically sprawled across the canvas – a tangible departure from his predominantly figurative work. Indeed, the abstract Oxidations, along with the Shadows and Camouflages, present divergent aesthetics compared to his typical figurative style.

The dripping effect of the present work visually recalls the painting technique of Jackson Pollock and many of the Abstract Expressionists that preceded Warhol. Known for closely observing the work and trends of the New York Action Painters, Warhol guided his own career in reaction to their work and theory. The Oxidation series presents a sharp juxtaposition between Pollock’s conscious and expressionistic flinging of the paint – a metaphor of masculinity with strong ejaculatory connotations. Warhol takes this gesture and turns it on its head, satirizing the methods traditionally praised as emotional and virile. Further, the chemical reaction of the copper paint and urine creates something wholly new – a metallic green pigment, thus underlining the alchemistic nature of sprinkling the seed and creating something new.

Though Oxidation Painting from 1978 is born from a base and subversive method, the painting itself is striking to behold. The metallic copper background is punctured by an iridescent green with a textured patina. The green spots range from a stream of splashes to a smeared effect along the topand right side of the canvas, which Warhol achieved by brushing urine onto the canvas with a paintbrush. The ironic result of Warhol’s transgressive chemical experimentation with the Oxidation Paintings, is a series full of rich and sumptuously stunning works, unique in Warhol’s vast oeuvre.