Andy Warhol

The Estate of Andy Warhol, New York
Sale: Christie's, New York, Post-War and Contemporary Art, 9 November 2005, Lot 358
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

New York, Museum of Modern Art; Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago; London, Hayward Gallery; Cologne, Museum Ludwig; Venice, Palazzo Grassi; Paris, Musée National d'art Moderne; Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, 1989-90, p.365, no. 397, illustrated in colour
New York, Van de Weghe Fine Art, Andy Warhol Guns, 2001

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the background tends more towards a true silver in the original, with no purple undertones. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals some minor wear to the upper right corner tip, and some very light buckling to the canvas towards the right edge. There is an unobtrusive, horizontal shallow crease to the canvas towards the lower right hand corner. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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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."

Charged with symbolic ambiguity, Andy Warhol’s Gun is both an icon of American heroism as well as a bold metaphor for death and violence. The powerful image of the gun presents a dichotomy as both a symbol of status and a weapon associated with chaos and lawlessness. As revealed through his personal diaries, Warhol was deeply preoccupied with the subject of death and increasingly so in the 1980s. The subject of death is recurrent in Warhol’s oeuvre since the early 1960s, when he began working on his Death and Disasters series. Similar to these earlier works where the artist used a variety of sources such as newspaper clippings of fatal accidents or the powerful image of electrical chairs, the gun as a lethal object appears distant and impersonal. Even though death is a most personal and individual experience, it is generalised and anonymised in the present work at first glance. The gun refers to the evocation of events rather than expressing an emotional event. This is further emphasised by the empty and shiny surface of the canvas, which underlines the gun as a consumerist symbol instead of a dangerous and mortal weapon. This iconography of American mainstream culture that is omnipresent in Warhol’s oeuvre relates the present work to the artist’s earlier, openly consumerist images of the Campbell’s soup cans or the dollar bills. 

Warhol always referred to himself as an outside and neutral observer rather than an active participant of events, claiming that his works had no explicit socio-political or personal commentary to them. However, in the present work Warhol’s personal history and biography are seemingly irrevocably interwoven. Warhol had his own near-death experience in 1968 when the radical feminist and writer Valerie Solanas shot him repeatedly with a .32 automatic gun at The Factory. “[…] I saw Valerie pointing a gun at me and I realized she’d just fired it. I said “No! No, Valerie! Don’t do it!” and she shot at me again. I dropped down to the floor as if I’d been hit I didn’t know if I actually was or not. I tried to crawl under the desk. She moved in closer, fired again, and then I felt horrible, horrible pain, like a cherry bomb exploding inside me.” (Andy Warhol cited in: Andy Warhol & Pat Hackett, POPism: The Warhol Sixties, Orlando 1980, p. 343).