安迪·沃荷

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York (LC# 1004)

Gian Enzo Sperone, Turin

Galerie Paul Maenz, Cologne

Alessandro Grassi, Milan (acquired directly from the above in 1992)

Thence by descent to the present owner

Cologne, Galerie Paul Maenz, Andy Warhol Paintings and Early Prints, 1985-86

Prato, Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci Prato, Live! L'Arte Incontra il Rock, 2011, n.p., illustrated in colour

Gregory Battock, ‘Andy Warhol: New Predictions for Art’, Arts Magazine, Vol. 48, May 1974, pp. 36-37, illustrated

Achille Bonito Oliva, Collezione Privata, Milan 1993, p. 65, illustrated in colour

George Frei and Neil Printz, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures, Volume 3, 1970-1974, New York 2010, p. 230, no. 2362, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the colour tends more towards a blue-green in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals two hairline cracks; one parallel with the right vertical stretcher towards the centre and another parallel with the left vertical stretcher bar to the upper centre. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
"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."

“Warhol showed uncanny acuteness in introducing the Mao image into his art at a time when the artist himself was just coming to enjoy, full-scale, the benefits of Western 'decadence.'"

Carter Ratcliff, quoted in: Victor Bockris, The Life and Death of Andy Warhol, London 1989, p. 372.

Executed between 1972 and 1973, Andy Warhol’s Mao series signals a number of new departures in both subject and style, evincing an astute political awareness and heralding the dawn of a new period of stylistic creativity. Although Warhol had broached the American political arena a decade earlier with his Electric Chair and Race Riots, both 1963, it was not until the present work that he engaged with the contentious international political concerns that were at the forefront of the global consciousness. Allied with this political awakening, Warhol’s treatment of this subject in a newly expressionistic hand set the precedent for the latter part of oeuvre.

Warhol’s juxtaposition of the deified image of the Communist leader with an art form that fetishised consumerist objects is wonderfully subversive. The source image derives from an official portrait of the authoritarian ruler which followed the canon of official Soviet portraiture of Stalin and Lenin. Unlike the latter, however, Mao’s image, which was seen to embody the revolutionary spirit of the masses, stares directly at the beholder and was exhibited prominently above the Tian’Anmen Gate where, in 1959, Mao had announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Symbolising perpetual surveillance – the ever-watchful eye of the nanny state – the image was ubiquitous in every schoolroom, shop front and public institution across the country and was reproduced on the first page of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, more commonly known as Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’, which was widely disseminated during and after the Cultural Revolution as a mandatory citizens’ code. With a print-run estimated at over 2.2 billion, this made Mao’s stern yet benevolent face one of the most extensively reproduced portraits in visual history. In Mao, therefore, Warhol found a readymade icon at the centre of a vast cult of personality.

First exhibited at the Musée Galliera in Paris in 1974, the Mao series represents Warhol’s first critically and commercially successful cycle following his premature ‘retirement’ from painting in order to devote himself entirely to film making in 1965. After his near-fatal shooting in 1968 he entered a time of reflection and re-evaluation in his art and up to this point, his early 1970s work had been dominated by society portraits. Thus the Mao series marked a significant stylistic turning point for Warhol, as Gregoy Battcock noted at the time in his review of the Paris show: “In the new works the combinations of the splashy, expressionist elements with the precise silkscreen images almost tend to cancel one another out or, at least, refute the precision of the screens” (Gregory Battcock, ‘Andy Warhol: New Predictions for Art’, Arts Magazine, May 1974, p. 35).

This expressionist style is abundantly clear in the present work: broad undulating brushstrokes encircle the screen-printed portrait in saturated modulating turquoise. Meanwhile the face of the subject is completed in hot yellow ochre, smudged with streaks of red across the eyes and mouth. By treating Mao in his signature style, Warhol demotes him from the enemy of the democratic ideal to an innocuous celebrity sitter. Throughout the cultural revolution of the previous decade, Mao had all but extinguished popular culture and substituted himself in the place of the stars of stage and screen. Here, Warhol appropriates and subverts this policy, and in smearing acrylic over his deified portrait, installs him as an American icon of Pop.