Andy Warhol

Private Collection
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Seattle, Seatte Art Museum; Denver, Denver Art Museum, Andy Warhol: Portraits, 1976-1977

Neil Printz and Sally King-Nero, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures 1970-1974, Vol. 03, New York 2010, p. 386, no. 2642, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although there are more pink tones to the face in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals very minor wear to the top right, bottom right and bottom left corner tips and a small number of faint and unobtrusive handling marks to the extreme edges. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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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 his portrait of Man Ray, Andy Warhol chose to depict one of the most influential artists and of the Twentieth Century, a pioneer of modern photography whose creative innovations he had long idolised, whilst neatly inverting an established trope by making the photographer into the subject. Despite Warhol’s obsessive interest in recording the world around him through the medium of photography, Man Ray was the only major photographer whom he collected seriously. In keeping with his fascination for the world of celebrity and international society figures, the artist was attracted to Man Ray’s photographic portraits of recognisable figures from an earlier period of the twentieth century: his extensive collection featured images of Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar and Nancy Cunard amongst others, although examples of Man Ray’s extraordinarily experimental Rayographs and Solarizations were also included.

Man Ray (1890-1976) was a key player within the Surrealist movement as well as its precursor, Dada. An American by birth, he moved to Paris in 1921 where he remained until World War II. Although he principally considered himself a painter, it was in Paris that he pioneered his Rayographs, an experimental technique in which objects were placed in varying positions on photographic paper then exposed directly to a light source. This was followed by a further innovation, Solarization, which was perfected in concert with Lee Miller, a respected photographer in her own right and his partner at the time. During this process a photographic negative was exposed briefly to light during the development stage, resulting in areas of light and dark being reversed and causing a shadow to form around the object’s edge. Man Ray utilised the dramatic and artistic potential of these remarkably innovative techniques in combination with his portraits of recognisable society figures such as Marquise Casati. Similarly, Warhol’s own portraits of celebrities often featured experimental techniques that emphasised various facial features whilst correspondingly accentuating shadows.

Man Ray was the result of an encounter between Warhol and the elder artist on 30^th November 1973. The introduction had been arranged by the art dealer Luciano Anselmino, resulting in an invitation for Warhol to spend the day in Man Ray’s Paris studio, an experience he relished. Warhol recalled the process that led to the Polaroid image of Man Ray upon which the portrait was based: "I took a SX-70 and then I put in a whole roll and I got ten… ten pictures of that and then he put a cigar in his mouth… And actually the cigar was bigger than he was because he’d… he’d gotten very… very bent over. And he looked like he was always far out but uh… I think it was just because he was bent over… I had him smoke the cigar" (The artist in: 'Factory Diary: Letter to Man Ray', K. Goldsmith, Ed., I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews: 1962-1987, New York 2004, p. 232). The resulting photograph is perhaps one of the least posed of any of the images that form the basis for Warhol’s portraits of the 1970s and 1980s, free of the artifice that resulted from the attempts of stylists to titivate his sitters, the usual prelude to a Warhol portrait.

Man Ray is one of the most purely painterly images Warhol produced during his artistic career, the background replete with textured brushstrokes and exuberant disturbances to the paint surface, either as a playful reference to, or perhaps a parody of, the Abstract Expressionist style which dominated the New York art scene during the 1950s. The electric blue background imbues the image with an air almost of gentle melancholy and reflection, a mood only slightly relieved by the pale tone of the face and the burning cigar tip. The accentuated shadows around the edges of the face, thrown into relief by the lighter tone of the skin, seem to recall the appearance of one of Man Ray’s own Solarization works. Man Ray can thus be seen as one of Warhol’s most affectionate, honest portraits: devoid of the creative sleights of hand which were customarily employed to ensure his subjects appeared as glamourized as possible, what remains is a loving homage from one extraordinary creative giant to another, two of the greatest artistic innovators of the twentieth century.