Andy Warhol

Private Collection (acquired from the artist)
Marvin Ross Friedman & Company, Miami
Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco
Private Collection
Phillips de Pury & Company, London, Contemporary Art, 16 February 2012, Lot 12
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Sally King-Nero and Neil Printz, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculpture 1970-1974, Vol. 03, New York 2010, p. 251, no. 2459, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is slightly less saturated in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals a thin tension crack running intermittently along the overturn edges. The varnish has slightly yellowed in places, which is inherent to the artist's choice of media. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Whilst China was shaken by the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 70s, Andy Warhol had officially ‘retired’ from painting. Having focused his energies more and more on film and video, the artist’s painterly output had come to a temporary standstill from which the portrayal of Mao Zedong would herald a turning point. Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972 stimulated Warhol to return to painting as a medium in its own right and to start a new group of works which would end up comprising an ambitious total of 199 portraits in various sizes and styles. Warhol’s motivation to depict a man who was quintessentially the face of late 20^th century totalitarianism was not at all of political nature. In 1971, he remarked that: ”Since fashion is art now and Chinese is in fashion, I could make a lot of money. Mao would be really nutty… not to believe in it, it’d just be fashion” (Sally King-Nero and Neil Printz, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculpture 1970-1974, Vol. 03, New York 2010, p. 166).

Bob Colacello, who worked alongside Warhol for 12 years at Interview magazine in the 1970s and early 1980s, later recalled how Mao was to become the subject of this important group of works: “It began with an idea from Bruno Bischofberger, who had been pushing Andy to go back to painting… Bruno’s idea was that Andy should paint the most important figure of the twentieth century” (Bob Colacello, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Up Close, New York 1990, p. 111). Initially, Albert Einstein was suggested for the impact of his Theory of Relativity, however for Warhol, fame was more important than ideas; appearance more important than importance itself. “That’s a good idea”, he replied, “but I was just reading in Life magazine that the most famous person in the world today is Chairman Mao. Shouldn’t it be the most famous person, Bruno?” (Andy Warhol quoted in: Ibid.) More than an individual, it was the mechanism of fame itself that fascinated Warhol, the degree to which fame consumes creativity by repeating one and the same image to a point of banality.

By the early 1970s, chairman Mao had become one of the most extensively reproduced public figures in history. His portrait could be found in books, public spaces and a giant version of it still famously hangs at Tiananmen Square. China’s leader had become a superstar, a readymade icon of totalitarianism. By choosing him over other contemporary icons such as Che Guevara, Warhol achieved a transition between Western contemporary art and a Chinese imagery that had in itself risen to the point of fetish: “Mao’s portrait was, in effect, already a Warhol.” (Sally King-Nero and Neil Printz, Eds, Op. Cit., p. 166). Through the use of bold colours and an expressionistic handling of paint, the icon of late Twentieth Century communism was appropriated as a consumerist commodity offered on a Western capitalist market.

The present work is one of the 122 small 12 by 10 inch canvases which were executed towards the end of the opus. Amongst the Mao paintings, this series of small works is the most painterly and experimental, with Warhol often adding paint on top of the silkscreened image, giving each image its unique characteristics. Warhol decisively progressed from the stencilled, machine-like precision of the Liz and Marilyn portraits to a looser, abstract-expressionistic handling in the Mao series. The touch of his hand, the material properties of the medium and the nuances of mixed and unmixed colour played an increasingly important role and is particularly visible in the present work.

Three distinct colours, a strikingly intense blue and orange and a more subdued earthy brown are broken up only by the sharp black outlines of Mao’s features. Vigorously and fast, Warhol applied the light blue background and breached the borders into the chairman’s jacket and face. Distinct passages of the composition are not isolated as in earlier works, but instead flow and mix into a complicated, abstract frenzy of line, colour and movement. The wide brush used in relation to the size of the canvas further enhances the effect of abstraction. From underneath all this, Mao still stares at the beholder like he does in his official portrait, but he has been stripped of context and his intimidating, all powerful aura is nothing but a faint memory.