.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Andy Warhol's Flowers from the collection of David McCabe is a stunningly crisp example from Warhol's iconic series of Flowers paintings created between 1964 and 1965. While many of Warhol's flower paintings appear somewhat off register or "ghosted" due to an uneven distribution of ink in the painting/printing process; the present example is fully inked and striking in its perfection. McCabe was presented with this work after spending an entire year famously documenting the life and times of Andy Warhol and his ever rotating entourage. McCabe was hired by Warhol to be available day and night, and was offered the job after Warhol saw the now classic psychedelic fish-eyed lens photograph of himself kneeling in front of a legion of flower paintings tiling the floor of The Factory. (A signed copy of this photograph accompanies the purchase of the present lot). In 2003 McCabe published A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, an amazing document showcasing McCabe's rich talents as a photographer.
The idea to paint flowers as the subject of a major series was apparently suggested to Warhol by Henry Geldzahler, then curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. To some degree, the pictures belong to a long art historical tradition of still-life painting. "With the Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we're doing my Flower period! Like Monet's water lillies, Van Gogh's flowers, the genre." (Gerard Malanga as cited in A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, New York 2003, p. 74).
Warhol's updated version is consciously banal, superficial, synthetic and enchantingly beautiful. Quintessentially sixties in their interpretation Flowers can also be viewed as an attempt by Warhol to create a truly "Popular" art. Dealer Ivan Karp recalls, "It was not an earthshaking photograph, but Warhol made a remarkable series of paintings out of it. Whatever, they were totally successful and we sold them all! And you could keep selling them right now! That's it. That's one of those immortal images. You know? He just found it. Right? It was a grand success." (Ivan Karp, interviewed in P. Smith, Andy Warhol's Art and Films, 1986, p. 358.).
The Flowers paintings followed Warhol's Death and Disaster series of 1962-1963--sensational images of electric chairs, suicides and horrendous car-crashes. While the Flowers can be seen as the vacuous flip-side of this horror and violence, there are some critics who believe that they are still permeated by Warhol's deep obsession with death. "What is incredible about the best of the flower paintings is that they present a distillation of much of the strength of Warhol's art--the flash of beauty that suddenly becomes tragic under the viewer's gaze No matter how much one wishes these flowers to remain beautiful they perish under one's gaze, as if haunted by death." (J. Coplans, "Andy Warhol: The Art", Andy Warhol, exh. cat., Pasadena Art Museum, 1970, p.52).
David McCabe snaps a photo of Andy Warhol.
The idea to paint flowers as the subject of a major series was apparently suggested to Warhol by Henry Geldzahler, then curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. To some degree, the pictures belong to a long art historical tradition of still-life painting. "With the Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we're doing my Flower period! Like Monet's water lillies, Van Gogh's flowers, the genre." (Gerard Malanga as cited in A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, New York 2003, p. 74).
Warhol's updated version is consciously banal, superficial, synthetic and enchantingly beautiful. Quintessentially sixties in their interpretation Flowers can also be viewed as an attempt by Warhol to create a truly "Popular" art. Dealer Ivan Karp recalls, "It was not an earthshaking photograph, but Warhol made a remarkable series of paintings out of it. Whatever, they were totally successful and we sold them all! And you could keep selling them right now! That's it. That's one of those immortal images. You know? He just found it. Right? It was a grand success." (Ivan Karp, interviewed in P. Smith, Andy Warhol's Art and Films, 1986, p. 358.).
The Flowers paintings followed Warhol's Death and Disaster series of 1962-1963--sensational images of electric chairs, suicides and horrendous car-crashes. While the Flowers can be seen as the vacuous flip-side of this horror and violence, there are some critics who believe that they are still permeated by Warhol's deep obsession with death. "What is incredible about the best of the flower paintings is that they present a distillation of much of the strength of Warhol's art--the flash of beauty that suddenly becomes tragic under the viewer's gaze No matter how much one wishes these flowers to remain beautiful they perish under one's gaze, as if haunted by death." (J. Coplans, "Andy Warhol: The Art", Andy Warhol, exh. cat., Pasadena Art Museum, 1970, p.52).
David McCabe snaps a photo of Andy Warhol.