Andy Warhol

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1982

Frayda Feldman and Jorg Schellmann, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1987, New York, 2003, p. 304, no. IIIC.49, illustration of other unique variants in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The fabric is attached to the backing board with bulldog clips along the top edge.
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Andy Warhol was first introduced to Joseph Beuys at Hans Mayer’s gallery in Düsseldorf in 1979. This extraordinary meeting marked the collision of two of the most pioneering artistic minds of the Twentieth Century. An observer of this first encounter recalls that, “for those who witnessed the two men approaching each other across the polished granite floor the moment had all the ceremonial aura of two rival popes meeting in Avignon” (David Galloway, ‘Beuys and Warhol: Aftershocks’, in: Art in America, July 1988, p. 121). Such an account reflects the legendary significance of the meeting between these two figures, who, although possessing contrasting ideologies, were artistic goliaths similarly adept at manipulating and fabricating their own mythologies.

Linked to a group of society portraits after artists including Man Ray and David Hockney, the present work belongs to a larger body of paintings of Joseph Beuys by Andy Warhol. In New York for his landmark retrospective at the Guggenheim in November 1979, Beuys was invited to Warhol’s Factory at the behest of Heiner Bastian, a devoted admirer of both the eminent artists’ work. Using his famous Big Shot camera, Warhol immortalised Beuys’ likeness with a series of Polaroid photo-portraits. The ubiquitous felt hat and safari jacket were thus assimilated into Warhol’s celebrity Pop Art pantheon through a set of images that would soon became the source for an ensuing series of portraits. Distinct from the extant paintings after Beuys however, the present work is uniquely composed. Beuys’ deadpan stare is repeated, stamp-like in a militaristic fashion and set against a khaki green laundry bag. Invoking Beuys’ idiosyncratic use of found objects and their elevation to sublime high-art status, this portrait signifies a conflation of Beuys with his revolutionary friend Warhol, the architect of Pop. Indeed, it is a unique work that symbolises a momentary yet radical transatlantic confrontation between Warhol, the catalyst of an artistic age informed by mass-production and consumption, and Beuys, the Twentieth Century’s artist-shaman who transformed a generation of post-war visual culture.