ANDY WARHOL | Jackie

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Eva Lee Gallery, New York
Galerie Heiner Fredrich, Monaco
Galleria del Leone, Venice
Collezione Giovanni Camuffo, Venice
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1976

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, February - May 1989
Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, February - May 1990

Georg Frei and Neil Printz, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures, Volume 2A, 1964-1969, New York 2004, p. 175, no. 1057, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the printed catalogue is fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Extremely close inspection reveals some very fine tension cracks to all four extreme outer edges and some minute spots of wear to all four extreme corner tips.Further extremely very close inspection reveals some very faint handling marks along the upper and right edge. No restoration Is apparent when examined under ultra-violet 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."

“The woman whose feelings were reproduced in all the media to such an extent that no better historical document on the exhibitionism of American emotional values is conceivable" (Rainer Crone, Andy Warhol, New York 1970, p. 29). Andy Warhol's Jackie dates from the height of the artist's career and combines the ground breaking themes of both his Death and Disaster series and his fascination with celebrity culture and the Society Portrait series. The present work shows a veiled Jackie Kennedy mourning at the funeral of her late husband, the tragically assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Jackie Kennedy's grieving countenance will always re-tell an epic tragedy and through the remote objectivity of the silkscreen, Warhol's Jackie documents the grief stricken expression of the United States' First Lady. With the most brilliant artistic innovation of its time, this work encapsulates the allure of unlimited celebrity, critiques the manipulative power and replicating effects of mass-media, and is a profound response to one of the most tragic moments of twentieth-century American history.

The source image belongs to a sequence of 8 images of the presidential wife selected by Warhol from the flood of press coverage in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination on 22^nd November 1963. Having pursued a successful career in magazine illustration and advertising during the 1950s, Warhol's brilliant invention here lies in editing and cropping the perfect image to encapsulate the entire narrative of an open-top limousine journey and a sniper's bullet that devastated the emotional landscape of a nation. Jackie immediately and efficiently narrates America's sudden, violent loss and deep shock, which is as palpable and horrifying today as it was half a century ago. The assassination was followed two days later by JFK's burial in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. While a nation mourned the loss of a political hero, broadcasting agencies and news editors assembled their valedictory testimonials. As an entire population sank into the shared psychosis of bereavement, the media's carefully choreographed reaction precipitated the Jackie corpus: one of the most prodigious critiques of mass communication ever conceived.

Captivated by the notions of celebrity and death, Warhol desensitised the overwhelming feelings of national loss through replication and multiplication, underscoring the manipulative potentiality of mass media. Warhol was disturbed by the media's ability to manipulate and yet simultaneously celebrate the power of the icon. Fame and its agents intoxicated him, and he understood celebrity as integral to modern life. This compelling work will always remain a seminal treatise on the emotional conditioning inherent to mass culture. Warhol was disturbed by the media's potential to manipulate, yet he simultaneously celebrated the power of the icon. Fame and its agents intoxicated him and he understood celebrity as integral to modern life. For Warhol, the genre of portraiture became a form of biography. The distilled emotions of America's first lady are enshrined on canvas in an image which captures the private side of a very public event. Captured in the stark monochrome of black and white, here Jackie is immortalised as a timeless and tragic heroine, whose very image recalls one of the twentieth century's defining moments. In keeping with his very best work, celebrity, tragedy and the spectre of death inhabit every pore of this iconic image.