Lot Essay
Among the many faces Andy Warhol presented to the world, this 1967 self-portrait presents him at his most enigmatic. This tightly cropped and serious looking image is one which seemingly presents the artist at his most real. But self-portraits are inevitably staged and throughout history, artists have claimed sincere revelation in works that have essentially been constructed self-projections to the world. Although this has been understood at some level, the idea of seeing into the soul of a genius has proven far too romantic an illusion to forgo; Andy Warhol is one of the earliest artists to disrupt the myth of full disclosure and expose the artifice that underlies self-portraiture. His self-portraits are overt fabrications, and as such, watersheds in the history of art.
Born of the artist's trademark silk screening process, the blue-green color lies on the surface allowing no visual penetration. In synthetic hues that underscore their artifice, the "figure" of Warhol is screened in such a way that his eyes, long regarded as the 'windows on the soul' disappear into sunken sockets which reveal nothing of the soul within. The rest of his facial features react with the background and become bold, flat and abstract elements, emblems of Warhol's stylized reduction.
Created on the upswing of his fame, Warhol rendered Self-Portrait in the cool, detached stance of his earlier portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy. Depicting these public figures in the dispassionate format he had employed for consumer products such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola Bottles, he presented them as media-manipulated, mass-marketed icons. No longer relying on the conventional tropes of portraiture such as individuality, psychological insight and personality traits, he forged a seminal type portrait with these works; archetypically Pop, they overtly stated the divide between public and private personae. By deliberately adopting this format for his own portrait, Warhol granted himself the kind of fade typically assumed by celebrities; more importantly, he inducted himself into their ranks. Propelled into the limelight via his recent exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and his increasing acclaim as a filmmaker, Warhol had arrived into the pantheon of the rich and famous. Self-Portrait marks this watershed.
Born of the artist's trademark silk screening process, the blue-green color lies on the surface allowing no visual penetration. In synthetic hues that underscore their artifice, the "figure" of Warhol is screened in such a way that his eyes, long regarded as the 'windows on the soul' disappear into sunken sockets which reveal nothing of the soul within. The rest of his facial features react with the background and become bold, flat and abstract elements, emblems of Warhol's stylized reduction.
Created on the upswing of his fame, Warhol rendered Self-Portrait in the cool, detached stance of his earlier portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy. Depicting these public figures in the dispassionate format he had employed for consumer products such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola Bottles, he presented them as media-manipulated, mass-marketed icons. No longer relying on the conventional tropes of portraiture such as individuality, psychological insight and personality traits, he forged a seminal type portrait with these works; archetypically Pop, they overtly stated the divide between public and private personae. By deliberately adopting this format for his own portrait, Warhol granted himself the kind of fade typically assumed by celebrities; more importantly, he inducted himself into their ranks. Propelled into the limelight via his recent exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and his increasing acclaim as a filmmaker, Warhol had arrived into the pantheon of the rich and famous. Self-Portrait marks this watershed.