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Lot Essay
From the earliest days of his career, Andy Warhol had a strong appreciation for—and encyclopedic knowledge of—art history. Beginning in 1963 with his reproduction of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in a series of several paintings, the Pop artist would often return to the annals of visual art for source material. The highly-emotive Eva Mudocci (After Munch) is a prime example of Warhol’s interest in translating and digesting works by other artists through his own unique processes. He found himself drawn to the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch on more than one occasion, and the present work is a testament to Warhol’s ability to coax a radical mix of emotive vibrancy and machine-like precision from the famous original. He noted, "The reason I'm painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do" (A. Warhol, quoted in D. Bourdon, Warhol, New York 1995, p. 140).
Actively railing against the dramatic tendencies of the Abstract Expressionists, Warhol sought to separate himself from the drippy, splashy emotions of his forebears by embracing mass production and reproductive techniques like silkscreening. He operated in a more democratic mode, making ‘high’ art into something more accessible to a population already familiar with works like Botticelli’s Venus, Leonardo’s Last Supper, or Munch’s The Scream while also elevating Hollywood celebrities and Campbell’s soup labels to the level of art historical canon. Warhol often eschewed machismo and ego-driven connections in his art in favor of works that appealed to and resonated with a broad audience.
A dynamic composition, the present example depicts a bust-length portrait of the English violinist Evangeline Hope Muddock (who went by the Italianate stage name of Eva Mudocci) adrift in a sea of energetic lines and pools of black. Munch’s original composition is nearly identical and also shows the sitter wearing a large brooch in a ghostly, ethereal style that bolsters the woman’s angelic appearance. Mudocci once recalled: “It was [Munch’s] ambition to make the most perfect portrait of me, but whenever he began a canvas for oils, he destroyed it because he was dissatisfied with it…” (E. Mudocci, quoted in P. Berman and P. Stave, Munch/Warhol and the Multiple Image, New York, 2013, p. 22). Mudocci was also featured in a number of other works by Munch and was a close friend and muse of the painter. In Warhol’s translation, the entire canvas is given over to a prominence of black as the background merges with the swirling lines of the figure’s hair. He highlights Mudocci’s face and slender neck in a bright cerulean blue while the brooch she wears counters the azure tint with a deep yellow. Overlaying the black markings is a lively, frenetic collection of red lines that causes the entire work to vibrate and squirm in an optical realm that is pure Warholian energy.
Warhol’s homage electrifies and invigorates the dark, moody source material by thrusting the quiet portrait into new territory. Munch’s Eva Mudocci (The Brooch) is clearly reproduced through Warhol’s expert silkscreening process, but the end result is decidedly Pop. In 1982, Warhol happened into Galleri Bellman on New York’s 57th Street and was taken by a Munch retrospective made up of over 100 prints and paintings. After several repeat visits and a discussion with the gallery directors, he started work on a series of paintings subtitled After Munch. The four works he chose as his source material included Munch’s instantly recognizable The Scream, as well as the portrait of Eva Mudocci, a self-portrait of the Norwegian artist, and the ethereal Madonna. This was not the first time the Pop icon had been enamored with Munch, however. A visit to the National Gallery and Munch Museet in Oslo in 1971 had piqued his interest, and Warhol had been collecting examples of the artist’s work ever since.
The genius behind Warhol’s art historical references lies not in his ability to accurately duplicate his predecessors (he left that to the precision of his screening), but to start a conversation about iconic works of art and their place within the cultural consciousness. Like advertising images, logos, or celebrity headshots, famous works of art transcend the museum space and the dusty art historical tome. They take up residence in the present, stripped of many previous allusions and instead existing as icons to be revered, copied, referenced, and put on dorm room posters. They are separated from their referents by so many steps that the aura of the original metamorphoses into something greater than the singular image itself. Warhol understood this transferal of meaning, and through his paintings sought to level the playing field. “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol,” he noted, “just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” (A. Warhol, quoted in G. Berg, “Andy: My True Story,” Los Angeles Free Press, March 17, 1967, p. 3). Throughout his career, Warhol consistently equated himself to his work and vice versa. His predilection for mass-media tropes and mechanical processes may seem at odds with the highly emotive oeuvre of Edvard Munch, but the two artists had a shared appreciation for tumultuous love and their own mortality. Hidden behind the iconic, oft-reproduced surfaces of their works is a deeply somber inquiry into humanity itself.
Actively railing against the dramatic tendencies of the Abstract Expressionists, Warhol sought to separate himself from the drippy, splashy emotions of his forebears by embracing mass production and reproductive techniques like silkscreening. He operated in a more democratic mode, making ‘high’ art into something more accessible to a population already familiar with works like Botticelli’s Venus, Leonardo’s Last Supper, or Munch’s The Scream while also elevating Hollywood celebrities and Campbell’s soup labels to the level of art historical canon. Warhol often eschewed machismo and ego-driven connections in his art in favor of works that appealed to and resonated with a broad audience.
A dynamic composition, the present example depicts a bust-length portrait of the English violinist Evangeline Hope Muddock (who went by the Italianate stage name of Eva Mudocci) adrift in a sea of energetic lines and pools of black. Munch’s original composition is nearly identical and also shows the sitter wearing a large brooch in a ghostly, ethereal style that bolsters the woman’s angelic appearance. Mudocci once recalled: “It was [Munch’s] ambition to make the most perfect portrait of me, but whenever he began a canvas for oils, he destroyed it because he was dissatisfied with it…” (E. Mudocci, quoted in P. Berman and P. Stave, Munch/Warhol and the Multiple Image, New York, 2013, p. 22). Mudocci was also featured in a number of other works by Munch and was a close friend and muse of the painter. In Warhol’s translation, the entire canvas is given over to a prominence of black as the background merges with the swirling lines of the figure’s hair. He highlights Mudocci’s face and slender neck in a bright cerulean blue while the brooch she wears counters the azure tint with a deep yellow. Overlaying the black markings is a lively, frenetic collection of red lines that causes the entire work to vibrate and squirm in an optical realm that is pure Warholian energy.
Warhol’s homage electrifies and invigorates the dark, moody source material by thrusting the quiet portrait into new territory. Munch’s Eva Mudocci (The Brooch) is clearly reproduced through Warhol’s expert silkscreening process, but the end result is decidedly Pop. In 1982, Warhol happened into Galleri Bellman on New York’s 57th Street and was taken by a Munch retrospective made up of over 100 prints and paintings. After several repeat visits and a discussion with the gallery directors, he started work on a series of paintings subtitled After Munch. The four works he chose as his source material included Munch’s instantly recognizable The Scream, as well as the portrait of Eva Mudocci, a self-portrait of the Norwegian artist, and the ethereal Madonna. This was not the first time the Pop icon had been enamored with Munch, however. A visit to the National Gallery and Munch Museet in Oslo in 1971 had piqued his interest, and Warhol had been collecting examples of the artist’s work ever since.
The genius behind Warhol’s art historical references lies not in his ability to accurately duplicate his predecessors (he left that to the precision of his screening), but to start a conversation about iconic works of art and their place within the cultural consciousness. Like advertising images, logos, or celebrity headshots, famous works of art transcend the museum space and the dusty art historical tome. They take up residence in the present, stripped of many previous allusions and instead existing as icons to be revered, copied, referenced, and put on dorm room posters. They are separated from their referents by so many steps that the aura of the original metamorphoses into something greater than the singular image itself. Warhol understood this transferal of meaning, and through his paintings sought to level the playing field. “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol,” he noted, “just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” (A. Warhol, quoted in G. Berg, “Andy: My True Story,” Los Angeles Free Press, March 17, 1967, p. 3). Throughout his career, Warhol consistently equated himself to his work and vice versa. His predilection for mass-media tropes and mechanical processes may seem at odds with the highly emotive oeuvre of Edvard Munch, but the two artists had a shared appreciation for tumultuous love and their own mortality. Hidden behind the iconic, oft-reproduced surfaces of their works is a deeply somber inquiry into humanity itself.