Beschreibung:

Andy Warhol Jackie 1964 silkscreen on canvas 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm.) Signed and dated twice "Andy Warhol 1964" along the overlap.
Provenance Ileana Sonnabend, Paris Gian Enzo Sperone, Milan Acquired from the above by the present owner, in 1977 Exhibited Milan, Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta, Gli Anni '60. Le Immagini al Potere, June 21 - September 22, 1996 Literature R. Crone, Andy Warhol New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970, no. 109, cat. nos. 957, 1126 (illustrated) R. Crone, Andy Warhol Das Bildnerische Werk Andy Warhols, Berlin: Kommissionsvertrieb Wasmuth KG, 1976, no. 118, cat. nos. 957, 1126 (illustrated) Gli Anni '60. Le Immagini al Potere, exh. cat., Fondazione Antonio Mazzota, Milan, 1996, p. 99 (illustrated) G. Frei, N. Printz, The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné Vol. 2A: Paintings and Sculpture 1964-1969, London: Phaidon, 2002, cat. no. 1127, p. 202 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay "I sat at Le Club one night staring at Jackie Kennedy, who was there in a black chiffon dress down to the floor, with her hair done by Kenneth --- thinking how great it was that hairdressers were now going to dinners at the White House." ANDY WARHOL 1963 Jackie from 1964 is a defining example of Andy Warhol’s early silkscreen paintings. Prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Warhol had concentrated his efforts on producing silkscreens of two other celebrity icons, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. He commenced these particular portrait series during moments of crisis—Marilyn Monroe’s silkscreens appeared shortly after her death, and Taylor’s life-threatening battle with pneumonia preempted her own silkscreens. Warhol found a timeless and elegant subject in the former first lady whose subjection to unprecedented levels of popular exposure following Kennedy’s assassination established her as a paragon of strength and tragedy in American culture. In Jackie, 1964, Warhol arrives at a culmination of his earlier series, exhibiting his mastery of the mechanical reproduction which responds directly to a seminal historic event. Catapulted to star status by her husband's election as President of the United States in November 1960, Jackie Kennedy became an inspiration to millions in the optimistic climate of a rejuvenated post-war America. Epitomizing youth, beauty and style, she became the ideal of a wife, mother and First Lady to the nation. In Jackie, 1964, she is shown with an escort at the funeral for her husband on November 25, 1963, three days after his assassination in Dallas, Texas. In extraordinarily solemn grief and intimate despair, the image reveals the new widow with a blank, shocked expression as if the reality of the day's events cannot be absorbed. Part of a group of eight original black and white photographs Warhol selected from a variety of printed sources, first published in the weeks following the assassination, the selections present personal and collective grief in a radically new manner. "Then, for the first time, there were many who experienced the banality of illustrious death, time being measured by the flash: a gasping instant…" (R. Guidieri, "JFK", Andy Warhol Death and Disasters, 1988-89, exh. cat., Houston: The Menil Collection, p. 29). Robert Pincus-Witten has compared the process of replication in Warhol's series to a type of religious rite, "a Mass of repetition, monotonously intoned, unto the heavenly measurelessness inherent to the grid and/or serial format - the same image over and over again, stretching away to infinity." (R. Pincus-Witten, Women of Warhol: Marilyn, Liz and Jackie, New York: C&M Arts, 2000, n.p.) Warhol's aim to de-sensitize the iconic image through repetition is implied here when one realizes that this picture was the central panel of what was once a triptych owned by Ileana Sonnabend. A rare example done in Warhol’s hypnotizing pthalo green, it exerts a powerful sentiment of loss and disturbance. Furthermore, this portrait perfectly encapsulates Warhol's ethic of portraiture as a form of biography. The once smiling idol of lost halcyon tranquility, Jackie Kennedy retells an epic tragedy. Georg Frei and Neil Printz