ANDY WARHOL | Kachina Dolls

Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the background tends more towards true white and the pinks tend more towards neon in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Extremely close inspection reveals some extremely fine tension cracks to the extreme outer edges and light handling and rub marks in places to the edges. Further extremely close inspection reveals a minute media accretion to the upper right hand corner. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra violet light.
"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."

Executed in Andy Warhol’s signature silkscreen technique and depicting a spiritual figurine of the Native American Holi tribe, the Kachina Dolls encapsulate several of Warhol’s most ground breaking artistic propositions, such as his uncovering of the ambiguities between the power of representation and reality and his seminal engagement with a symbolically charged American cultural vernacular. The Kachina Dolls were created only a few months before Warhol’s untimely death, a time when the artist had regained the iconographic power with which he revolutionised the visual language of the 1960s. Forming part of the artist’s pivotal Cowboys and Indians series, the present work is a poignant culmination of Warhol’s decade long engagement with imagery that is at once provocatively stereotypical and integral to American culture and its translation into the impersonal and aesthetically cool visual language of Pop. Adorned with attributes such as the feathered headpieces and patterned ponchos that are insignia of clichéd and romanticised fantasies of the Midwest, the Kachina Dolls are rendered in a starkly contrasting colour scheme that is characteristic of Warhol’s visual vocabulary. In its appropriation of quotidian imagery and in its realisation in a saccharine Pop colourway, the Kachina Dolls relates conceptually to many of the most iconic works realised during the quarter of a century that had passed since the seminal first show of the Campbell’s Soup series at the Ferus Gallery in 1962.

An analytic champion of the psychology of idealisation, Warhol uncovers with the Cowboys and Indians series the contradictions inherent to cultural identity crafting and its effects on a society in need of points of identification. Corresponding to the observations that enabled the Marilyns or the Elvis works, the Kachina Dolls are a brilliant artistic commentary on the struggle for identification and aspiration of the individual in an era of consumerism and mass media in America: “Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see. When I was little, I never left Pennsylvania, and I used to have fantasies about things that I thought were happening in the Midwest, or down South, or in Texas, that I felt I was missing out on… the fantasy corners of America seem so atmospheric because you’ve pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books. And you live in your dream America that you’ve custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in a real one” (Andy Warhol, America, New York 1985, p. 8).



This work is stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and numbered PA48.011 on the overlap.