Andy Warhol

In 1963 Warhol hit on a new method of making portraits. When he was commissioned by Robert Scull to paint his wife Ethel’s portrait, Warhol made a date to take her to see a photographer. “I expected to see Avedon or somebody like that. Instead, we went to one of those places on Forty-Second Street where you put a quarter in a machine and take three pictures. We kept two booths going for an hour.” (Ethel Scull in an interview for Ladies Home Journal, March 1964, cited in: Georg Frei and Neil Printz, ed., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 1, New York, 2002, p.460) Warhol chose 35 shots from more than 300, enlarged them, silk-screened them and individually inked them to create Ethel Scull 35 Times. Later in the same year, Florence Barron commissioned a self-portrait and Warhol returned to the photo-booth. The result was striking. Wearing dark glasses and striking poses, Warhol, looking like a cross between Greta Garbo and Steve McQueen, both creates an air of mystery and keeps the viewer’s attention on the surface. Using planar monochromes, Warhol achieved aesthetically powerful images. Moreover, the photo-booth self-portraits turn centuries of art history on its head. Unlike the traditional portrait-painter who seeks to reveal the soul of the subjects, Warhol has no interest in exploring the psychological and emotional depths of his subjects, including or perhaps in particular himself. His concern lies purely with the image, with the subject as object.

In 1979, Warhol re-visited the photo-booth portraits, as part of his Retrospective series and it is from this series that the present work is taken. By re-working his own most famous pieces or ‘Greatest Hits’ from a decade and a half before, Warhol both acknowledges and re-enforces his status as the King of Pop Art; only Warhol could successfully appropriate his own body of work. Obsessed with fame throughout his career, the present self-portrait, rendered sharply green, gave Warhol the opportunity to examine his own celebrity. By the time it was executed, he was one of the most famous artists of the century, and by placing his self-portraits next to portraits of Mao Tse Tung, Marilyn Monroe and Mona Lisa, Warhol recognises and re-affirms this status. This self-portrait becomes not just a strong visual image but also a powerful intellectual statement and a symbol of his own success.