28th Oct, 2018 8:30
Historic, Modern and Contemporary Art
12
Andy Warhol (United States Of America 1928-1987)
Mao
colour screenprint on Beckett high white paper
Artwork date: 1972
Signature details: signed in ballpoint pen; stamped 'copyright Andy Warhol 1972, Printed at Styria Studio Inc.' on the reverse; accompanied by a certificate of authenticity by Goodman Gallery on 1 October 1996
Edition: number 173 from an edition of 250 + 50AP
Sold for R523,480
Estimated at R400,000 - R600,000
colour screenprint on Beckett high white paper
Artwork date: 1972
Signature details: signed in ballpoint pen; stamped 'copyright Andy Warhol 1972, Printed at Styria Studio Inc.' on the reverse; accompanied by a certificate of authenticity by Goodman Gallery on 1 October 1996
Edition: number 173 from an edition of 250 + 50AP
(1)
sheet size: 91.4 x 91.4 cm
Notes:
Andy Warhol’s obsessive pursuit of the logic of the reproduction found one of its more cogent and sustained social and political platforms in his hundreds of paintings and prints of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Mao was the founding father of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 until his death in 1976. His imaging of figures such as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley gave shape to the confluence between popular culture, fame and mechanical reproduction that he found so fascinating. But this confluence took a different turn in the series of images of Mao. US President Richard Nixon announced the first full diplomatic visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972, putting Mao in the full glare of the Western media machine. Warhol lost no time in taking on Mao as his new subject.
In doing so, he was responding not only to the newsworthiness of the Chairman’s image, reproduced as it already was on millions of posters in China. Mao’s The Little Red Book had penetrated Western consciousness, and had been the bible of the Cultural Revolution since the mid-1960s. Warhol wanted to image Mao as, simply, the most famous person in the world – not only by Western media standards, but in the eyes of the most populous nation on Earth. So he embarked, between 1972 and 1973, on a series of paintings and prints of the now-familiar head and shoulders portrait of Mao which was widely distributed during the Cultural Revolution. The print, despite paying homage to Mao’s fame and the extreme reproducibility of his image worldwide, also brings a characteristically irreverent lightness of touch. The colour palette is relatively restrained, with Mao’s Yat-sen suit, his equivalent of a neutral Western business suit, rendered in a dusky pink against a mustard background. The same pink, however, appears on the Chairman’s lips, in what seems remarkably like an application of lipstick. Warhol’s playfulness, and his sustained engagement with the politics of images and their reproduction and dissemination, are epitomised in this delightful work.
James Sey
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Auction: Historic, Modern and Contemporary Art, 28th Oct, 2018
Aspire Art Auctions brought a significant double-header of top lot leads to this sale.
Stellar results were achieved for internationally prominent William Kentridge and Alexis Preller, one of South Africa’s most respected and collectable modern artists. Collectors were attracted to Kentridge’s remarkable, Drawing from Stereoscope (Double page, Soho in two rooms) (1999), which sold for R6 600 400, while Preller’s Adam (1972), sold for a world record at R9 104 000. Modern offerings also included works by Peter Clarke, Kenneth Bakker, and Douglas Portway, while the contemporary segment included Moshekwa Langa, Penny Siopis, Simon Stone, Clive van den Berg, and Georgina Gratrix, amongst others.
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