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Lot Essay
‘I like money on the wall. Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you the first thing they would see is the money on the wall’
(A. Warhol, quoted in The philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, Orlando 1975, p.133).
‘Warhol’s Dollar Signs are brazen, perhaps insolent reminders that pictures by brand-name artists are metaphors for money, a situation that never troubled him’
(D. Bourdon, quoted in Warhol, New York 1989, p. 384).
Created in 1981, Andy Warhol’s Dollar Sign is a superb manifestation of perhaps the most salient inquiry in Pop art history: the relationship between art and commerce. Warhol’s lifelong fascination with money as a ubiquitous symbol of wealth, power, and status spans his entire oeuvre as a key motif and inextricably links his art with his own biography. As such, the Dollar Sign stands in direct reference to Warhol’s works from the early 1960s in which he first employed the silkscreen to transfer dollar bills onto canvases. Returning to this iconography as a mature artist in the 1980s, the present work confronts the prominent American symbol as a potent visual instrument charged with ambiguous significance. The Dollar Sign is depicted in vivid colouration transformed into a sublime and mysterious emblem, one that captures the imagination and illustrates the hunger for wealth that lies behind the American Dream. The large dollar sign is silkscreened in Warhol’s idiosyncratic printing technique against a sleek and flat pink background. While painterly in essence, the graphic quality is very much palpable through the vivid and expressive movement of line, particularly the hatchings visible in the lower half of the sweeping serpentine curve.
The series was exhibited at the Castelli Gallery, New York and Warhol attended the opening on Saturday, January 9th, 1982. An entry from the artist’s diary reads: ‘Another big opening of mine—a double—Dollar Signs at the Castelli on Greene Street and Reversals at the Castelli on West Broadway… it was like a busy sixties day’ (A. Warhol, quoted in P. Hackett, ed., The Andy Warhol Diaries, New York, 1989, p. 425). The seemingly endless succession of dollar signs on the wall transformed the space into a veritable temple of financial worship articulated in the artist’s inimitable palette of bright Pop colours. The deliberate repetition of an instantly recognisable icon of mass culture seemed to openly celebrate and embrace consumerism and commerce. On experiencing the entire gallery space filled with dollar signs, Warhol’s friend David Bourdon noted, ‘When they were shown at the Castelli Gallery in January 1982, they appeared as prophetic emblems of the huge amounts of money that would pour into the art world during the following years. Warhol’s Dollar Signs are brazen, perhaps insolent reminders that pictures by brand-name artists are metaphors for money, a situation that never troubled him’ (D. Bourdon, quoted in Warhol, New York, 1989, p. 384).
Masterful in its execution, the present Dollar Sign epitomises Warhol’s glittering and glamorous lifestyle as he entered the 1980s. Indeed, this work affirms Warhol’s status as a commentator who continually challenged the status quo of the art world and of society in general. The work is elevated to a secular religious symbol of worship for a culture that has come to define and embrace financial power as its very raison d'être, creating a pop art icon that remains deeply relevant to this day.
(A. Warhol, quoted in The philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, Orlando 1975, p.133).
‘Warhol’s Dollar Signs are brazen, perhaps insolent reminders that pictures by brand-name artists are metaphors for money, a situation that never troubled him’
(D. Bourdon, quoted in Warhol, New York 1989, p. 384).
Created in 1981, Andy Warhol’s Dollar Sign is a superb manifestation of perhaps the most salient inquiry in Pop art history: the relationship between art and commerce. Warhol’s lifelong fascination with money as a ubiquitous symbol of wealth, power, and status spans his entire oeuvre as a key motif and inextricably links his art with his own biography. As such, the Dollar Sign stands in direct reference to Warhol’s works from the early 1960s in which he first employed the silkscreen to transfer dollar bills onto canvases. Returning to this iconography as a mature artist in the 1980s, the present work confronts the prominent American symbol as a potent visual instrument charged with ambiguous significance. The Dollar Sign is depicted in vivid colouration transformed into a sublime and mysterious emblem, one that captures the imagination and illustrates the hunger for wealth that lies behind the American Dream. The large dollar sign is silkscreened in Warhol’s idiosyncratic printing technique against a sleek and flat pink background. While painterly in essence, the graphic quality is very much palpable through the vivid and expressive movement of line, particularly the hatchings visible in the lower half of the sweeping serpentine curve.
The series was exhibited at the Castelli Gallery, New York and Warhol attended the opening on Saturday, January 9th, 1982. An entry from the artist’s diary reads: ‘Another big opening of mine—a double—Dollar Signs at the Castelli on Greene Street and Reversals at the Castelli on West Broadway… it was like a busy sixties day’ (A. Warhol, quoted in P. Hackett, ed., The Andy Warhol Diaries, New York, 1989, p. 425). The seemingly endless succession of dollar signs on the wall transformed the space into a veritable temple of financial worship articulated in the artist’s inimitable palette of bright Pop colours. The deliberate repetition of an instantly recognisable icon of mass culture seemed to openly celebrate and embrace consumerism and commerce. On experiencing the entire gallery space filled with dollar signs, Warhol’s friend David Bourdon noted, ‘When they were shown at the Castelli Gallery in January 1982, they appeared as prophetic emblems of the huge amounts of money that would pour into the art world during the following years. Warhol’s Dollar Signs are brazen, perhaps insolent reminders that pictures by brand-name artists are metaphors for money, a situation that never troubled him’ (D. Bourdon, quoted in Warhol, New York, 1989, p. 384).
Masterful in its execution, the present Dollar Sign epitomises Warhol’s glittering and glamorous lifestyle as he entered the 1980s. Indeed, this work affirms Warhol’s status as a commentator who continually challenged the status quo of the art world and of society in general. The work is elevated to a secular religious symbol of worship for a culture that has come to define and embrace financial power as its very raison d'être, creating a pop art icon that remains deeply relevant to this day.