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Lot Essay
Beginning in the late 1970s, and in a marked departure from his earlier representational work, Andy Warhol began a series of more abstract paintings. Coming of age as in artist in the shadow of Abstract Expressionism, he would have been the first to recognize abstract painting as an heroic force to be reckoned with and he set out to meet the challenge. His first foray into avowedly enigmatic abstraction were his Shadow paintings and although they were an apparently new direction for Warhol, the resulting paintings continued an investigation into the aesthetic and emotional qualities of shadows which Warhol which began with his Electric Chairs and continued with his later Skull paintings. There are two, apparently contradictory, stories surrounding the origins of the Shadow series. According to Warhol’s assistant Ronnie Cutrone, cardboard maquettes were arranged under raking light and photographed, creating a series of arbitrary, abstract and formal sources of deliberately constructed shadows created under strong light. In this light, the Shadow paintings to be the product of a pseudo-scientific exploration of abstraction in art. Another, more intriguing, account comes from Warhol’s own diaries in which he describes taking numerous Polaroids of “landscapes” based off various parts of the human body to be used for Shadow paintings—an explanation that is also corroborated by various members of the artist’s entourage. Whatever the true nature of their origins, it is always impossible to discern from them what object is being depicted. In this way Warhol is concealing far more than he is revealing, and as such his Shadow paintings are a rare volte-face from his usual highly representational paintings.
In Knives, a painting from 1982, Warhol returns to using representational forms, yet in arranging his phalanx of chef’s knives in a regimented line, they almost become abstract in their silhouetted rigidity, mirroring the dark crevices of the earlier Shadow paintings. "While creating an inventory of American superstars and supermarket favorites, [Warhol] also compiled an anthology of the American way of death, from car crashes and race riots to the electric chair itself," Robert Rosenblum explains. "And it turned out, too, that the most commonplace instruments of death, guns and knives...would eventually turn up in Warhol's art as isolated objects, as iconic in their spaceless environments as the famous Campbell's soup can that launched his international fame" (R. Rosenblum, Andy Warhol, Knives: Paintings, Polaroids and Drawings, February-April 2001, reproduced at www.speronewestwater.com).
Selecting his Knives in the same manner he chose to silkscreen his Guns, Warhol first began photographing exotic knives and daggers, which he gained access to through Chris Stein from the band Blondie. However, upon reviewing these photographs, Warhol asked Jay Shriver, his new art assistant, to buy some ordinary kitchen knives from a restaurant-supply shop on the Bowery in New York. Shriver selected a set of Galaxy 8-inch slicers. Drawn to the sheer malice of their immediacy and availability, Warhol's particular choice of knives reflects his devotion to the ubiquity and banality of certain images. Instead of photographing the eccentric blade, "he chose the common object, considered by most of us as nothing special, and elevat[es] it to art Kitchen knives never looked more interesting and beautiful" (V. Fremont, "Galaxy 8" Slicer," Andy Warhol: Knives, op. cit., p. 21).
In similar fashion, Warhol’s depiction of the humble egg has never made them so aesthetically appealing. For both Gold Eggs and White Eggs the artist photographed a dozen eggs, seemingly placed at random, against a dark backdrop. Then, silkscreening the resulting image against a jet-black background, Warhol highlights the crispness of the oval shape alongside the clarity of the screen. Without their natural color these ovoid forms become some of the artist’s most abstract shapes and a palpable sign of his continued interest in pushing the boundaries of his art and striving to investigate the power and emotional resonance of bold forms.
In Knives, a painting from 1982, Warhol returns to using representational forms, yet in arranging his phalanx of chef’s knives in a regimented line, they almost become abstract in their silhouetted rigidity, mirroring the dark crevices of the earlier Shadow paintings. "While creating an inventory of American superstars and supermarket favorites, [Warhol] also compiled an anthology of the American way of death, from car crashes and race riots to the electric chair itself," Robert Rosenblum explains. "And it turned out, too, that the most commonplace instruments of death, guns and knives...would eventually turn up in Warhol's art as isolated objects, as iconic in their spaceless environments as the famous Campbell's soup can that launched his international fame" (R. Rosenblum, Andy Warhol, Knives: Paintings, Polaroids and Drawings, February-April 2001, reproduced at www.speronewestwater.com).
Selecting his Knives in the same manner he chose to silkscreen his Guns, Warhol first began photographing exotic knives and daggers, which he gained access to through Chris Stein from the band Blondie. However, upon reviewing these photographs, Warhol asked Jay Shriver, his new art assistant, to buy some ordinary kitchen knives from a restaurant-supply shop on the Bowery in New York. Shriver selected a set of Galaxy 8-inch slicers. Drawn to the sheer malice of their immediacy and availability, Warhol's particular choice of knives reflects his devotion to the ubiquity and banality of certain images. Instead of photographing the eccentric blade, "he chose the common object, considered by most of us as nothing special, and elevat[es] it to art Kitchen knives never looked more interesting and beautiful" (V. Fremont, "Galaxy 8" Slicer," Andy Warhol: Knives, op. cit., p. 21).
In similar fashion, Warhol’s depiction of the humble egg has never made them so aesthetically appealing. For both Gold Eggs and White Eggs the artist photographed a dozen eggs, seemingly placed at random, against a dark backdrop. Then, silkscreening the resulting image against a jet-black background, Warhol highlights the crispness of the oval shape alongside the clarity of the screen. Without their natural color these ovoid forms become some of the artist’s most abstract shapes and a palpable sign of his continued interest in pushing the boundaries of his art and striving to investigate the power and emotional resonance of bold forms.