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Auction archive: Lot number 135

Andy Warhol

Estimate
US$250,000 - US$350,000
Price realised:
US$638,500
Auction archive: Lot number 135

Andy Warhol

Estimate
US$250,000 - US$350,000
Price realised:
US$638,500
Beschreibung:

Andy Warhol Brillo Soap Pads Box 1964 Silkscreen ink and house paint on plywood. 17 x 17 x 14 in. (43.2 x 43.2 x 35.6 cm). This work is stamped by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board and numbered “A121.103” on the underside.
Provenance Stable Gallery, New York Catalogue Essay Andy Warhol took the mass produced, mass-consumed retail world and turned it into art. What Duchamp did in 1917 with Fountain, Warhol does again with the Brillo Box almost 50 years later. Paying homage to Duchamp and his essential movement in art-history, Warhol revives the Dadaist philosophy by re-creating the everyday object. Essential in every American household, since the use of coal-oven stoves in 1900, Warhol transforms mundane objects into an art form. The original design of the box is one that Warhol would have seen as “POP”. The elemental form and primary colors which represent Brillo is a perfect example of an object that screams Warhol. It is also an object that through its re-composition by the artist, Warhol simultaneously transitions the way one looked at art. Through the eyes of Warhol the consumer “everyday” was out and thus would change art-history forever, defining Pop Art and Warhol a forefather of it all. Pop art challenged the tradition of aesthetics by transforming images of mass-produced commodities of popular culture into fine art displayed in a gallery. By completely dislocating the image from its context and isolating it as an autonomous object, a commodity became a receptor of thought and reconsideration. Andy Warhol was the leading figure of this revolution in thought and aesthetics. Pop artists were using paint and mediums in entirely new ways to challenge the essence of art, dripping it, splashing it, and even entirely submerging objects with images in order to cast them in new light. Objects that would normally be ignored for their banality were screaming for attention through their unusual display. It was an attempt to expose the truth of a mass consumer culture. Warhol posed questions that could no longer be ignored. In 1964 Warhol exhibited his first series of Brillo Boxes at a solo show at New York’s Stable Gallery alongside other boxes meant to replicate the packaging for Del Monte Peach Halves, Campbell’s Tomato Soup, and Heinz’s Ketchup. Each of the boxes was constructed of wood in the dimensions of the actual box with the label from the respective brand silk-screened on its surfaces. To the viewer, the boxes looked just as one would find them in any store. Warhol also utilized unusual methods of display for both the Campbell’s Soup Cans and the Brillo Boxes in order to link them back to the original product as much as possible. The Soup Cans were displayed in a continuous row, as they would be in a grocery store shelf. The Brillo Boxes were a three dimensional extension of what Warhol had done with the Campbell’s Soup Cans, stacked in columns just as if they were for sale. By displaying his works in a nontraditional format Warhol was removing them even more from the realm of the traditional art world. The utilization of such ubiquitous household brands revealed the “commercial framework behind the pristine spaces of the art gallery and art museum, while rubbing the nose of high culture in the mundane disorder of the supermarket stockroom” (P. Walsh, “Brillo Boxes,” Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 1998). Not surprisingly, such novelty was not immediately received positively. Many critics of the show felt that as an artist, Warhol should be creating images of his own instead of replicating the images of others, especially those created as labels for commercial products. Critics of Warhol’s work believed that such utilization of such labels degraded the seriousness of art. Warhol’s Brillo Box “made the form of that question finally and forever clear: how is it possible for something to be a work of art when something else, which resembles it to whatever degree of exactitude, is merely a thing, or an artifact, but not an artwork? Why is Brillo Box when the Brillo cartons in the warehouse are merely soap-pad containers?” (A.C. Danto, “Andy Warhol: Brillo Box” Art Forum, New York, 1993). A new philosophical question regarding the a

Auction archive: Lot number 135
Auction:
Datum:
13 May 2010
Auction house:
Phillips
13 May 2010 New York
Beschreibung:

Andy Warhol Brillo Soap Pads Box 1964 Silkscreen ink and house paint on plywood. 17 x 17 x 14 in. (43.2 x 43.2 x 35.6 cm). This work is stamped by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board and numbered “A121.103” on the underside.
Provenance Stable Gallery, New York Catalogue Essay Andy Warhol took the mass produced, mass-consumed retail world and turned it into art. What Duchamp did in 1917 with Fountain, Warhol does again with the Brillo Box almost 50 years later. Paying homage to Duchamp and his essential movement in art-history, Warhol revives the Dadaist philosophy by re-creating the everyday object. Essential in every American household, since the use of coal-oven stoves in 1900, Warhol transforms mundane objects into an art form. The original design of the box is one that Warhol would have seen as “POP”. The elemental form and primary colors which represent Brillo is a perfect example of an object that screams Warhol. It is also an object that through its re-composition by the artist, Warhol simultaneously transitions the way one looked at art. Through the eyes of Warhol the consumer “everyday” was out and thus would change art-history forever, defining Pop Art and Warhol a forefather of it all. Pop art challenged the tradition of aesthetics by transforming images of mass-produced commodities of popular culture into fine art displayed in a gallery. By completely dislocating the image from its context and isolating it as an autonomous object, a commodity became a receptor of thought and reconsideration. Andy Warhol was the leading figure of this revolution in thought and aesthetics. Pop artists were using paint and mediums in entirely new ways to challenge the essence of art, dripping it, splashing it, and even entirely submerging objects with images in order to cast them in new light. Objects that would normally be ignored for their banality were screaming for attention through their unusual display. It was an attempt to expose the truth of a mass consumer culture. Warhol posed questions that could no longer be ignored. In 1964 Warhol exhibited his first series of Brillo Boxes at a solo show at New York’s Stable Gallery alongside other boxes meant to replicate the packaging for Del Monte Peach Halves, Campbell’s Tomato Soup, and Heinz’s Ketchup. Each of the boxes was constructed of wood in the dimensions of the actual box with the label from the respective brand silk-screened on its surfaces. To the viewer, the boxes looked just as one would find them in any store. Warhol also utilized unusual methods of display for both the Campbell’s Soup Cans and the Brillo Boxes in order to link them back to the original product as much as possible. The Soup Cans were displayed in a continuous row, as they would be in a grocery store shelf. The Brillo Boxes were a three dimensional extension of what Warhol had done with the Campbell’s Soup Cans, stacked in columns just as if they were for sale. By displaying his works in a nontraditional format Warhol was removing them even more from the realm of the traditional art world. The utilization of such ubiquitous household brands revealed the “commercial framework behind the pristine spaces of the art gallery and art museum, while rubbing the nose of high culture in the mundane disorder of the supermarket stockroom” (P. Walsh, “Brillo Boxes,” Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 1998). Not surprisingly, such novelty was not immediately received positively. Many critics of the show felt that as an artist, Warhol should be creating images of his own instead of replicating the images of others, especially those created as labels for commercial products. Critics of Warhol’s work believed that such utilization of such labels degraded the seriousness of art. Warhol’s Brillo Box “made the form of that question finally and forever clear: how is it possible for something to be a work of art when something else, which resembles it to whatever degree of exactitude, is merely a thing, or an artifact, but not an artwork? Why is Brillo Box when the Brillo cartons in the warehouse are merely soap-pad containers?” (A.C. Danto, “Andy Warhol: Brillo Box” Art Forum, New York, 1993). A new philosophical question regarding the a

Auction archive: Lot number 135
Auction:
Datum:
13 May 2010
Auction house:
Phillips
13 May 2010 New York
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