Andy Warhol

Marisa Del Re Gallery, New York

Galerie Beaubourg, Paris

Private Collection, Paris

Galerie Haas and Fuchs, Berlin

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2007

Colour:The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate.Condition:Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
"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."

An encounter between two artistic titans – Andy Warhol and Giorgio de Chirico – is orchestrated across the canvas in The Two Sisters (After de Chirico), here Warhol repeats and re-imagines de Chirico’s Oreste e Pilade (1962) four times in striking swathes of brilliant reds, greens, blues, and yellows. As a part of Warhol’s magnificent Art from Art series, the present work appropriates de Chirico’s metaphysical mannequin heads, only to reframe them in a distinctly Warholian aesthetic of bold colours and simplified black accents.

By the time the present work was produced, Warhol had already achieved fame and fortune for his stylised silkscreen paintings of the 1960s and '70s, which transformed images into high-art icons. He endlessly and obsessively repeated the likeness of celebrities, Pop culture icons, and the mass media images over and over again, and in so doing, re-enacted the kind of mechanical reproduction of images that were splashed across the covers of newspapers and television screens. This modus operandi took on another dimension when Warhol began appropriating images not only from contemporary mass culture, but also from the Old Masters and modern giants of the historical art world itself.

Warhol’s first foray in painting from art was in 1963 when he reproduced the Mona Lisa – undoubtedly the most famous face in all of art history. She had recently been on show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and had stirred up quite a media storm that drew Warhol in, more so than the painting itself. It was not until 20 years later that Warhol truly returned to art history as his main subject. In his Art from Art series, Warhol pays the ultimate form of tribute to the most renowned and recognised works by Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso by repainting, repeating, and renewing these masterpieces in his own Warholian style.

Warhol, whose name had become synonymous with the contemporary images of his time, actually had very significant ties to the traditional arts as well. He was one of the founding board members of the New York Academy of Art, which opened in 1980 – only two years prior to the production of the present work. It aimed to revive the traditional teaching of fine art from the historical academies, involving drawing from life models and plaster casts, but also from mannequins and previous artistic masters. As the century began to come to a close, this reflective mentality of looking back in history was very much particular to this twilight time (Robert Rosenblum, ‘Warhol as Art History,’ in: Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, Andy Warhol Retrospective, 1989, pp. 25 and 32). 

In 1982, the Museum of Modern Art exhibited a de Chirico retrospective, inspiring Warhol to appropriate the work of this Modern Italian master, and producing his own set of After de Chirico paintings that were shown at the Campidoglio in Rome later that year.  Similar to Warhol, de Chirico also had the tendency to repeat certain figures and fictions across his body of work – such as mannequins, trains, and empty cityscapes with elongated shadows.  In his late years, de Chirico notoriously proceeded to replicate his own masterpieces in full. Oreste e Pilade was itself duplicated by de Chirco as Les Masques in 1973, and then by Warhol via the present work only ten years later in 1982.   

Warhol’s artistic piracy crops de Chirico’s original painting and selectively plucks out certain elements from it, so that they become further emphasised in The Two Sisters (After de Chirico). The blues, reds, greens, and yellows that are carefully contained within the lines of de Chirico’s mannequin heads are given further vibrancy and dynamism by Warhol, who takes this colour combination and aggressively silkscreens it across the entire canvas, disobeying all lines and logic. As such, despite the contrast in artistic sensibilities between Warhol and de Chirico, there emerge certain visual affinities and thematic resonances from their engagement. Both of their works reflect a deep investment in mythology, whether it be the Greek mythological princes Orestes and Pylades, or the mythology of Hollywood celebrities. Furthermore, both artists demonstrate the power of an iconic image, and how it endlessly proliferates as copies, duplicates, and multiples through time and space. 

In addition to resonating with de Chirico himself, the present work also recalls Warhol’s own stylised portraits through which he rose to critical acclaim. Like the overwhelmingly repeated faces of Mona Lisa in Thirty Are Better Than One (1963) or Marilyn Monroe in Marilyn x 100 (1962), this is a double portrait hypnotically multiplied four times on the canvas, as to showcase eight faces. In vibrant colours, these generic mannequin heads also make reference to Warhol’s tendency to simultaneously simplify, accentuate, and obscure facial details to the point where all his portraits come to look stylishly alike: a string of faces wearing slightly off-kilter, brightly coloured masks or makeup.

The present work is therefore a powerful painting about Warhol repeating de Chirico, but also about Warhol repeating himself. Warhol has most memorably demonstrated the productive potential of appropriation: through repetition, fresh perspectives of the past can be discovered. As such, the present work not only evokes an artistic lineage between two artistic greats, but it is also melancholic in its tendency to look backwards – especially since it was created in the last five years of Warhol’s life. In 1989, two years after his death, the last quarter of the Twentieth Century would come to be known as the ‘Age of Warhol’, and Robert Rosenblum would further claim that Warhol was not only a part of art history, but that he should be remembered as art history – a bold statement that confirms this painting’s status as an icon of art history itself.