Andy Warhol

The Estate of Andy Warhol, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

London, Coskun Fine Art, "Tickled Pink" Warhol Canvases from Pink Shoes to Pink Marilyn, 2006

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality tends more towards turquoise in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Extremely close inspection reveals a few very fine and unobtrusive tension cracks running intermittently along the extreme overturn edges. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Central to Andy Warhol’s highly acclaimed body of work, the theme of death dominates the artist’s ground-breaking output. Having turned to the representation of this subject in the early 1960s with his Death and Disasters series, for the rest of the decade Warhol brilliantly explored these ideas further. Using the iconic figures of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, James Dean and Jackie Kennedy among others, the artist represented tragedy through an originally intriguing and powerful execution. Two decades later, Warhol would revisit many of his earlier subjects, creating remarkable works such as his Reversal Series. Further to revisiting specific motifs, Warhol also re-examined his subject matter, creating a new series of works with a focus on deadly weapons. In the summer of 1981 Warhol started creating his Guns.

Warhol had already explained as early as 1963 during an interview for Art News magazine that, “I guess it was the big plane crash picture, the front page of a newspaper: 129 DIE. I was also painting the Marilyns. I realized everything I was doing must have been Death…every time you turned on the radio they said something like “4 million are going to die”. That started it” (Andy Warhol quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, The Menil Collection, Andy Warhol: Death and Disasters, 1989, p. 19). As a striking example of its kind, Guns epitomises Warhol’s concerns and preoccupations. Creating an impression of movement, almost as if they had been fired repeatedly, at least five guns have been screened in inky black on a turquoise blue background. Each of the weapons’ highly detailed design has been imprinted boldly onto the flat surface of the canvas, giving the composition an electric charge of immediacy, capturing the essence of this arresting motif.

Warhol of course had himself been involved in a violent episode; one that would mark him for the rest of his life. On the 3^rd of June 1968 Valerie Solanas - a radical feminist and writer who had appeared shortly in Warhol’s film I, A Man the year before - turned up at The Factory. Upset because she thought that Warhol had stolen her script for a play, she decided to confront the artist and was carrying two guns: a .32 automatic and a .22 revolver, the former of which she shot repeatedly at him. Warhol was taken to hospital immediately, undergoing a five-hour-long surgery that would miraculously save him, but that also left him severely scarred for the rest of his life. It is precisely the images of a .22 revolver and several models of a .32 automatic gun that appear in the present work, connecting powerfully with the artist’s own near-death experience.

Although Warhol’s personal diaries convey a lifestyle of glamour and decadence, during the 80s many of those who had been part of his entourage during the 60s and 70s passed away, often as a result of drug addiction or AIDS. Perhaps it was these events, and his awareness of aging - something he expressed concern about continuously in his journals - that prompted the artist to turn his attention again to what had been a central theme of his earlier work. In the same manner as he had previously done with emblematic works such as Most Wanted Men from 1963 or the series of Jackies from 1963-64, with Guns Warhol refers to events rather than depicting them directly. However, despite the almost clinical approach to his subjects and emotional understatement of the works, the underlying associations behind his chosen motifs confer Guns with an energy and dynamism that is unique to Warhol’s paintings. Indeed, in its cold and detached depiction of a deadly weapon, Guns remains a powerful example of Andy Warhol’s extraordinary artistic vision.