Andy Warhol

Anthony D'Offay Gallery, London
Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels
Sale: Christie's, London, Post-War and Contemporary Art, 10 December 1998, Lot 552
Acquired directly from the above

London, Anthony D'Offay Gallery, Andy Warhol, 1986
Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, Andy Warhol, 1989, front cover and p. 35, illustrated in colour
Leipzig, Museum der Bildenden Künste, Gunter Sachs, 2008, p. 122, illustrated in colour
New York, Dia Art Foundation, Andy Warhol: Skulls 1976, 1987
New York, Museum of Modern Art; Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago; London, Hayward Gallery; Cologne, Museum Ludwig; Venice, Palazzo Grassi; Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, 1989 - 90, p. 147, no. 113 
Exhibition Catalogue, Lucerne, Kunstmuseum, Andy Warhol: Paintings 1960-1986, 1995, no.1, illustrated
Moscow, Museum Tsaritsyno, Gunter Sachs, 2009

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is much brighter and more fluorescent in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is minor canvas draw in the lower right corner and light wear to the extreme lower corner tips. Ultra-violet light reveals a small thin line of retouching above the bottom of the lower right quadrant and a further spot to the extreme bottom edge 20cm. in from the lower left corner.
"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."

"Always theatrical, [Warhol] now donned his fright wig for a series of self-portraits that... we are tempted to experience as a last will and testament" (Robert Rosenblum, 'Andy Warhol's Disguises' in Exhibition Catalogue, St. Gallen Kunstverein Kunstmuseum, Andy Warhol, Self Portraits, 2004 p. 26).

The magnificent Self-Portrait from 1986 represents the ultimate conclusion to Gunter Sachs' enduring esteem and unbridled passion for the groundbreaking work of Andy Warhol. Warhol constitutes the very core of the Gunter Sachs Collection; the presence of his last great artistic contribution here affirms Sachs' expert commitment as the purveyor of one of the most outstanding and complete private collections of Pop art ever assembled. Prominently featured in a number of significant museum exhibitions of Warhol's oeuvre to date and prestigiously chosen as the catalogue front cover for the Warhol retrospective held in Brussels and Paris at Galerie Isy Brachot in 1989, this chromatically arresting and imposing example is one of only six executed in this large size. Prophetic of his unexpected demise not long after these works were executed, Self-Portrait is a haunting effigy of an artist at the height of his creative powers; positioned in the very highest tier, the present work signifies the absolute apotheosis of Warhol's iconic and groundbreaking career. Acquired by Sachs in the decade following Warhol's untimely death at the age of 58, the present Self-Portrait poignantly evokes the lifespan of a friendship shared between two like-minds. In 1995, Gunter Sachs recalled the very last time he saw Warhol before his unexpected death in 1987: "One afternoon, I visited Andy and his crew in the New York Factory. We were spinning old yarns, he smiling and I laughing out loud as was our habit. I was off again in a flash. 'See you in Europe or somewhere...' Five days later, Andy was dead. Those who knew him – miss him" (Gunter Sachs, 'Encounters with Andy Warhol' in: Exhibition Catalogue, Cologne, Chapel Art Centre, German Photography in the Rheinland, 1995, p. 10).

By the end of his career, Andy Warhol had ultimately become more famous than many of the celebrities he dedicated his career to portraying. Charting the course of Warhol's groundbreaking practice, the iconic self-images deliver the most authoritative and remarkable insight into Warhol as 'brand' and vehicle of a powerful cultural phenomenon. They were the lifeblood of his work, but of all the self-portraits made throughout his lifetime, the haunting and enigmatic corpus produced in 1986 constitute the definitive self-depiction of Warhol's entire oeuvre. Described by Georg Frei and Neil Printz as "one of the most representative and iconic images of the artist", these works are the final impression Warhol painted of himself for posterity (Georg Frei and Neil Printz, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 2B, Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, London and New York 2004, p. 227). Executed only months before his sudden death in hospital on 22 February 1987 while recovering from gall bladder surgery, the 1986 self-portraits are universally acknowledged as Warhol's last great artistic gesture in which he re-attains the artistic high-ground of his seminal works from the 1960s. One of only six works executed in the iconic 40inch size, the same scale used to enshrine the iconic likenesses of Marilyn, Jackie and Liz, these paintings were unveiled at the Anthony D'Offay Gallery in 1986 as part of the first exhibition of Warhol's career solely dedicated to the theme of self-portraiture. Today works from this landmark exhibition grace the prestigious collections of Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Carnegie Museum of Art Pittsburgh.

In 1986, more than in any other of his self-portraits, Warhol tackled the challenge of self-depiction with an unrivalled and up-close theatricality, presenting an image both of Warhol the man and Warhol the artistic phenomenon. As David Bourdon observes, "Warhol's visage by this time was, of course, almost totally invented: the hair belonged to one of dozens of wigs, the skin had been dermatologically transformed and constantly taughtened through the use of astringents, and the sunken cheeks had been smoothed out with collagen injections" (David Bourdon, Andy Warhol, New York 1989, p. 402). Articulated here in shocking pink Warhol exposes his starkly isolated, distinctive appearance to our sharp scrutiny in unparalleled photographic detail. These final works catalogue the transformation in his ageing features as parallel to the technical transformation in his art from maverick to master. Using his face as an arena for technical and compositional experimentation, by now Warhol had harnessed and honed to sheer perfection the silkscreen process which he had introduced to fine art practice in the early 1960s. While the 1966 self-portraits are characterised by often rough printing and serendipitous outcomes, here the image is of such controlled clarity that it resounds in our memory even when we cease to look. The silkscreen captures every minutiae and contour of Warhol's features, from his sunken cheeks, the slight jowls around his pursed lip and that incredibly penetrating stare. Warhol's endeavour for the ultimate seductive surface reaches its retroactive apogee in these works; the flawlessly slick, black, even lamina of ink, acts as anathema to the thick, brushy acrylic surfaces of the 1970s portraits – here Warhol returns to the ineluctable flatness of the picture plane.

While the 1963 and 1964 self-portraits were based on a photo-mat strip of photographs, in the 1986 series Warhol uses a Polaroid photograph as his source image, a technique which he had refined in his portraiture throughout the 1970s. Wearing a black turtle-neck sweater and one of his many elaborate wigs, in his diaries Warhol recalls the making of the image, "At the office Sam tried to take pictures of me that I needed to work from for the Self Portraits for the English show, and I'd done my hair in curlers and everything and he just couldn't get it right" (the artist cited in Jennifer Higgie, 'Andy Warhol' in Frieze, 5^th September 1996). Comparing the final canvases to the original Polaroid, it is evident that Warhol chose the image in which his top best covered his neck. In this way, Warhol makes his body disappear entirely, so that his severed head hovers surrounded by a disquieting and impenetrable darkness.

Warhol had an obsessive preoccupation with death, even before Valerie Solanas entered the Factory and shot him, nearly killing him,
on 3^rd June 1968. This morbid fascination is openly reflected in his work, especially in the often gruesome Death and Disaster and Electric Chair series. Here, the mysterious image of the artist's gaunt features reflects this lifelong fascination with the transience of life, and seems to convey an awareness of his own impending mortality. While there is no way that Warhol could have foreseen what fate had in store for him, there is an almost tangible sense of the ageing artist confronting his own demise. A sense of the ultimate moment fills the canvas, as if this is the summa of an entire lifetime's work. As John Caldwell noted of Warhol's last series, "The new painting, coming as it does twenty years after the last great self-portraits in the sixties, has by contrast with them a strange sense of absoluteness. Perhaps this comes in part from the fact that the artist's neck is invisible, or it may derive from the oddly lit nimbus of hair that seems posed forever over his head. Certainly, the portrait derives part of its power from the sense that we are being given a rare chance to witness the aging of an icon" (Anon., 'A New Andy Warhol at the Carnegie', Carnegie Magazine, Pittsburgh, January - February 1987, p. 9).

Despite the high chromatic register and high-keyed tonality, Warhol's likeness delivers a bleak and moribund physiognomy. Set against the inky black background, the disembodied head takes on the resemblance of a skull, the consummate vanitas motif, a reminder of the ubiquity of life and death. Previously Warhol had explored the memento mori in a series of 'Skulls' from 1976 and subsequently in a small group of self-portraits with a skull two years later when the artist turned fifty. In the present work, however, Warhol himself becomes the vanitas object. The heightened contrast emphasises the bone structure of the skull below the taught skin and the artist's gaunt features and pallor. Pausing to consider his own mortality, Warhol's image resembles a Death Mask - the practice which has existed since Roman times of casting the features of the deceased in wax to commemorate and record their likeness for posterity - or rather a life mask, like that made of William Blake in the early Nineteenth Century and subsequently depicted by Francis Bacon in the mid 1950s. In Bacon's painting, the pallid face is reproduced floating against a dark background. Purportedly an index of life, like Warhol's last self-portrait, it is implicitly evocative of death. Immortalising the mysterious and enigmatic artistic persona that Warhol had meticulously cultivated throughout his career, the present Self-Portrait constitutes his swan song before the curtain came down on one of the most prodigious careers in the History of Art.

Openly acknowledging the artifice and deception inherent in any form of representation, Warhol, in his 1960s self-portraits, presented himself as a constructed fiction as affected and contrived as his own public image. In the present work, although wearing his trademark wig, Warhol stares directly out of the canvas with unprecedented directness. For the first and only time, in the 1986 self-portraits the shy, elusive Warhol, who preferred to hide behind an elaborate public persona, candidly exposes himself to our scrutiny. In doing so, the quintessential flaneur of his age himself becomes the object of our gaze, bestowing truth to his famous statement from 1967. Though grossly disingenuous at the time, with the 1986 Self-Portraits Warhol's prophesy at last rings true: "If you want to know about Andy Warhol, then just look at the surface of my pictures, my movies and me and there I am; there's nothing in between" (the artist cited in Gretchen Berg, 'Andy: My True Story,' in Los Angeles Free Press, 17 March 1967, p. 3).