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Lot Essay
"This is what the Flowers represented, in nascent form. They marked Warhol's pivot away from Pop, and thus from brand names and celebrity portraits... As we've seen, this move involved generalizing the image, obscuring not just its photographic source but also the specific type of blossoms on offer, in order to prepare it for Warhol's distinctive stamp. Fame, which had long been one of the primary subjects of his work, was now also one of its effects. Warhol's status as an artistic brand had been secured." (M. Lobel, Andy Warhol: Flowers, exh. cat., New York, 2012, n.p.).
The following two Warhol Flowers share a history of ownership. Their original owner was Arman, the famous French Nouveau Realist. Arman had his first exhibition in the United States in 1961 and thereafter New York would become his second home. He quickly befriended Warhol and appeared in Warhol's film Dinner at Daley's in 1964, and was also the subject of a Warhol portrait in 1986. The two artists often traded works and Arman acquired a number of significant Warhol works during their decades long friendship.
Arman married Corice Canton in 1971 and she confirmed that both Warhol Flowers works were acquired by Arman by purchase or trade directly with Warhol. In the early 1970s, Arman consigned these works with Galerie Beaubourg in Paris, which was the gallery that represented Arman at the time, and which was co-owned by Patrice Trigano and Pierre Nahon.
Beaubourg brought the two Flowers to the Cologne Art Fair in 1974, which at the time was one of the most prestigious venues for selling 20th Century art in the world. The two Flowers paintings were sold to Gilbert Trigano in Paris, who later sold them through Galerie Ronny Van de Velde & Co, one of the best known dealers in Antwerp. The two paintings were included in an ambitious exhibition Van de Velde mounted for the LineArt artfair in Ghent in October of 1986. Entitled Modern and Contemporary Paintings and Sculpture 1940-1980, the exhibition included major works by European and American Pop artists, such as Arman, Martial Raysse, Warhol and Tom Wesselmann. The two Warhol Flowers paintings were the highlight of his booth and the red Flowers was featured on the cover of the catalogue he produced. It was sold by Van de Velde to its present owner in 1986, where it has remained in the collection ever since.
Andy Warhol's Flowers embody a shift in his work from mining celebrity culture to cultivating a more abstract, filmic approach to subject matter. While it is well documented the source material was taken from the article on Kodak's home coloring photographic process in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography, less has been written about how Warhol took this source photograph as raw material and re-fashioned a whole new icon.
Michael Lobel in Andy Warhol Flowers (Ibid, n.p.) describes the instructions to his printer scribbled on the newly adjusted photo collage, rotated clockwise once: "Mr. Golden Make in Black + White line sort of/Make like my 13 most wanted men," which refers to his Thirteen Most Wanted Men, 1964 commissioned for the New York State Pavilion at the World's Fair. The panels of starkly screened criminals stare out frontally or placed in profile, creating a patterned grid-like formation that repeats the face/head or seemingly arbitrarily deviates from the order. Once this image was made into a silkscreen, the reverse image is what one sees in the Flower paintings, whereby the blossoms are further transformed into a flattened image suitable for Warhol's masterfully literal trans-figuration of the humble source photograph. They radiate not a sunny, cheerful disposition of which flowers seem to possess naturally but a dark, impersonal quality alluding to sex and death. As the mechanisms of sexual reproduction in plants, flowers acts as alluring agents in order perpetuate that species. Flowers also function a kind of momento mori in art, where in an Old Master painting, everyday objects and flora serve to remind the viewer the incessant marching of time, and how everything living is subject to decay and ultimately death. Warhol's Flowers, despite their bright, unadulterated colors, that epitomizes the optimism and surface of Pop Art; it also shows its sinister, shadowy side, where such levity and promise comes at a steep cost one must bear. Four years later, on June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Any Warhol, inflicting him with gun wounds that could have been fatal.
The following two Warhol Flowers share a history of ownership. Their original owner was Arman, the famous French Nouveau Realist. Arman had his first exhibition in the United States in 1961 and thereafter New York would become his second home. He quickly befriended Warhol and appeared in Warhol's film Dinner at Daley's in 1964, and was also the subject of a Warhol portrait in 1986. The two artists often traded works and Arman acquired a number of significant Warhol works during their decades long friendship.
Arman married Corice Canton in 1971 and she confirmed that both Warhol Flowers works were acquired by Arman by purchase or trade directly with Warhol. In the early 1970s, Arman consigned these works with Galerie Beaubourg in Paris, which was the gallery that represented Arman at the time, and which was co-owned by Patrice Trigano and Pierre Nahon.
Beaubourg brought the two Flowers to the Cologne Art Fair in 1974, which at the time was one of the most prestigious venues for selling 20th Century art in the world. The two Flowers paintings were sold to Gilbert Trigano in Paris, who later sold them through Galerie Ronny Van de Velde & Co, one of the best known dealers in Antwerp. The two paintings were included in an ambitious exhibition Van de Velde mounted for the LineArt artfair in Ghent in October of 1986. Entitled Modern and Contemporary Paintings and Sculpture 1940-1980, the exhibition included major works by European and American Pop artists, such as Arman, Martial Raysse, Warhol and Tom Wesselmann. The two Warhol Flowers paintings were the highlight of his booth and the red Flowers was featured on the cover of the catalogue he produced. It was sold by Van de Velde to its present owner in 1986, where it has remained in the collection ever since.
Andy Warhol's Flowers embody a shift in his work from mining celebrity culture to cultivating a more abstract, filmic approach to subject matter. While it is well documented the source material was taken from the article on Kodak's home coloring photographic process in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography, less has been written about how Warhol took this source photograph as raw material and re-fashioned a whole new icon.
Michael Lobel in Andy Warhol Flowers (Ibid, n.p.) describes the instructions to his printer scribbled on the newly adjusted photo collage, rotated clockwise once: "Mr. Golden Make in Black + White line sort of/Make like my 13 most wanted men," which refers to his Thirteen Most Wanted Men, 1964 commissioned for the New York State Pavilion at the World's Fair. The panels of starkly screened criminals stare out frontally or placed in profile, creating a patterned grid-like formation that repeats the face/head or seemingly arbitrarily deviates from the order. Once this image was made into a silkscreen, the reverse image is what one sees in the Flower paintings, whereby the blossoms are further transformed into a flattened image suitable for Warhol's masterfully literal trans-figuration of the humble source photograph. They radiate not a sunny, cheerful disposition of which flowers seem to possess naturally but a dark, impersonal quality alluding to sex and death. As the mechanisms of sexual reproduction in plants, flowers acts as alluring agents in order perpetuate that species. Flowers also function a kind of momento mori in art, where in an Old Master painting, everyday objects and flora serve to remind the viewer the incessant marching of time, and how everything living is subject to decay and ultimately death. Warhol's Flowers, despite their bright, unadulterated colors, that epitomizes the optimism and surface of Pop Art; it also shows its sinister, shadowy side, where such levity and promise comes at a steep cost one must bear. Four years later, on June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas shot Any Warhol, inflicting him with gun wounds that could have been fatal.