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Lot Essay
"When Gene Swenson asked Warhol about his paintings of Elizabeth Taylor in 1963, Warhol responded, "I started those a long time ago, when she was so sick and everybody thought she was going to die. Now I'm doing them all over, putting bright colors on her lips and eyes" (Art News [Nov. 1963]; 60). Warhol's remarks help differentiate his paintings of Elizabeth Taylor into two chronologically distinct groups and are the basis of what are designated here as the early Elizabeth Taylor paintings.
These comprise two groups of works, Men in Her Life and Liz as Cleopatra, made in late 1962... The pictures of Taylor that Warhol chose to use all come from the April 13, 1962, issue of Life, the cover of which she appeared on with Richard Burton.
Warhol chose three pictures from this feature: the young Taylor on horseback during the making of National Velvet; Taylor accompanied by her then-husband Mike Todd, meeting Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds at the Epsom races; the source for Men in Her Life; and a full page picture of the star as Cleopatra. Together these form a sort of retrospective portrait of the movie star, similar to the Rauschenberg portrait Let Us Now Praise Famous Men...
Both versions of Men in Her Life are punctuated by the verticals of the frames' edges. Another vertical interrupts each image, since the reproduction from Life was printed across the gutter of the page. The repeating patterns of verticals creates an optical effect not unlike that of a flickering movie screen" (G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963, vol. 1, New York, 2002, p. 301).
These comprise two groups of works, Men in Her Life and Liz as Cleopatra, made in late 1962... The pictures of Taylor that Warhol chose to use all come from the April 13, 1962, issue of Life, the cover of which she appeared on with Richard Burton.
Warhol chose three pictures from this feature: the young Taylor on horseback during the making of National Velvet; Taylor accompanied by her then-husband Mike Todd, meeting Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds at the Epsom races; the source for Men in Her Life; and a full page picture of the star as Cleopatra. Together these form a sort of retrospective portrait of the movie star, similar to the Rauschenberg portrait Let Us Now Praise Famous Men...
Both versions of Men in Her Life are punctuated by the verticals of the frames' edges. Another vertical interrupts each image, since the reproduction from Life was printed across the gutter of the page. The repeating patterns of verticals creates an optical effect not unlike that of a flickering movie screen" (G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963, vol. 1, New York, 2002, p. 301).