Andy Warhol

“I thought that the album cover he did for the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers was the most original, sexy and amusing package that I have ever been involved with.” Mick Jagger

Having been fascinated by the culture of celebrity throughout his life, by the 1970s, Warhol’s own success and notoriety was such that his fame now rivalled that of stars he had first idolised. Seamlessly combining social life with business, he established himself as the most foremost portraitist in America undertaking commissions from the stars of his acquaintance: Mick Jagger, Yves Saint Lauren, Liza Minnelli, presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, the Shah of Iran, to name but a few. Even though he was as (if not more) famous than his sitters, he remained easily star-struck and admitted to being “thrilled to be able to know what colour eyes a person has just from looking at them, because colour TV still can’t help you too much there.” (Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, Florida 1975, p. 80)

Warhol’s portraits of TV, movie and rock stars shifted his production into the next level, and satisfied an urge he clearly had been feeling ever since his first photo-inspired portraits of Marilyn, Liz and Elvis. Although his first portrait commission had been in 1963 from Bob Scull for the portrait of his wife, Ethel, it wasn’t until the mid 1970s that Warhol decided to turn his full focus into producing commissioned portraits of the protagonists of the “tinsel and glitter” era. These commissioned portraits of the 70s were as beneficial for the reputations of the people in them as they were for Warhol. For the sitters, it was a means of associating themselves with the instantly recognisable cool Warhol aesthetic, and for the artist it was a reflection of his rising star and a validation of his own celebrity status. As the bold colours and intimate clarity of the celebrity portraits convey, Warhol relished his privileged face to face access to the stars and icons of his time. His silkscreen technique had now been refined to such a degree that he was able to create flawless and flattering images of his subjects, and popularity of the celebrity portraits was such that they became the artist’s primary source of income.

Linking the worlds of popular culture and art with unprecedented directness, the celebrity portraits of the 1970s have a further autobiographical role in their depiction of the people in Warhol’s life at this time. Mick Jagger was one of the first celebrity portraits Warhol made and it represented the longstanding friendship between two of the hottest stars of the time. The two men had first been introduced in the early 1960s by the rock-star’s wife, Bianca, who used to spend time at Warhol’s Factory as one of its celebrity ‘regulars’. Having been impressed by Warhol’s iconic ‘Unpeeled’ design for the Velvet Underground in 1967, Jagger asked him to create the cover for the Rolling Stones’ forthcoming ‘Sticky Fingers’ album.

Around this time Jagger posed for Warhol in a series of topless Polaroid pictures that were later silkscreened onto canvas to become the basis for a series of portraits and lithographs. Ever since his first photo-booth commission with Ethel Scull, Warhol preferred amateur preparatory shots for their artless quality and ability to ensure that his final image was as devoid as possible of stylistic arrangement. It allowed Warhol’s screen to focus foremost upon the personality and character of its sitter. For his Polaroids, Jagger posed bare-chested and scruffy-haired, and as always, Warhol placed his sitter by a white wall and used copious amounts of film to get the best shots. The resulting photographs capture precisely what Warhol was looking for: Jagger’s wildness, his sensuality and his exuberance - the well-known traits of his character which emanate from the intense blue depths of the present portrait.

Warhol once said “I have never met a person that I wouldn’t call a beauty” (ibid. p. 61). However he also believed in plastic surgery and in touch-ups to enhance his sitters’ appearance. In the canvases executed from the Polaroid shots, therefore, Warhol evens out Jagger’s features and erases wrinkles and marks with his brush. As with most of Warhol’s earlier portraits, these canvases show the artist’s eagerness to play with the paint brush. Although not quite with the “abstract expressionist” effect he mockingly added to his first portraits (Bob Colacello in Andy Warhol Headshots, 2000), here the artist feels free to use his brush with vigour and to allow for painterly swirls and zigzags to emerge from the composition. In Mick Jagger’s portraits as a series, and in this one in particular, the sitter’s gaze is the undisputed protagonist. So much so here, that the predominant colour used for the entire composition is blue, in all its nuances, starting from Jagger’s eye tone. Here is where Warhol most effectively expresses his fascination with celebrities and star-culture: his emotion and pride for finally having entered the realm of the people that can see stars’ eyes from a close distance.