Beschreibung:

Andy Warhol Skull 1976 Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen inks on canvas. 38.1 x 48.3 cm. (15 x 19 in). Signed and dated 'Andy Warhol 1976' on the overlap.
Provenance Fred Hughes, New York; Heiner BAstian Fine Art, Berlin; Stellan Holm, New York; Private Collection, New York Literature Exhibition Catalogue, Gagosian Gallery, Cast a Cold Eye: The Late Work of Andy Warhol New York, 2006, p.85 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay ‘I never understood why when you died, you didn’t just vanish, and everything could just keep going the way it was only you just wouldn’t be there. I always thought I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say ‘figment’.’ (Andy Warhol as cited in Andy Warhol Giant Size, London, 2006, p.524) Arguably the most well known and pertinent artist of the 20th century, Andy Warhol the man, the art and the legacy requires no introduction. The single greatest artistic innovator of the Post War era, his lasting influence on our contemporary culture is evident for all to see. Nearly three decades of work came to a premature end in 1987 when he died from post operation complications, robbing the artistic world of its talisman, of its undisputed figure head. Having meticulously planned his own funeral long before his passing, the fragility of life and the impendence and omnipotence of death, most particularly his own death, had always been at the forefront of his mind. Artistically, with the posthumous portraits of Marilyn Monroe the representations of Jackie Kennedy the widow, and his Death and Disaster series, it can be said that death was Andy Warhol’s single most important theme throughout his artistic canon. The present lot, a small but tightly composed, vivid, thickly painted canvas from his acclaimed Skull series, poignantly captures the essence of a troubled soul attempting to come to terms with his inner demons. Executed in 1976, over a decade before his death, Skull presents the viewer with a middle aged Andy Warhol contemplating the transience of life. In the present lot and the series as a whole Warhol tackles head on the motif of the skull within the long, meaningful Vanitas tradition in Western art. The first known representation of the skull is thought to have come from the Dutch painter Jacques de Gheyn the Elder with his 1603 work Vanitas Still Life, a painting which has been retained in the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum since 1974, just two years prior to Warhol’s execution of the present lot. For more than 4 centuries, nearly every master has weighed in on the issue from Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran, to the founder of modern art, Paul Cezanne, and finally to Warhol’s closest rival as the most significant and influential artist of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso However, unlike the somber, contemplative representations of his esteemed predecessors, Warhol’s contribution, in typical, distinctive Warholian fashion, is executed in bright, day-glo colours. His memento mori is depicted close up in three quarter pose, isolated against a two tier background and casting a shadow, the shadow of death. The vivacious hues of acrylic paint, navy blue and hot pink in the present lot, satirically counterbalance the morbid subject matter. The dichotomy between the subject and the execution, the image of a skull and glamorous colours in which it is painted, is representative of Warhol’s schizophrenic personality, of his well documented desire for fame and celebrity, glitzy life in contrast to, as quoted above, his wish for a blank tombstone. In 1975 Andy Warhol said about death, ‘I don’t believe in it, because you’re not around to know that it’s happened. I can’t say anything about it because I’m not prepared for it.’ (Andy Warhol The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), Orlando 1975, p. 123) Famously cryptic, Warhol may not have known how to use words to describe death but a year later he certainly knew how to poignantly and forcefully depict it. His Skull series, a definitive portrait of death, immortalizes mortality. As one of his most autobiographical bodies of work, it als