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Lot Essay
'I looked around the studio and it was all Marilyn and disasters and death,' Geldzahler recalled. 'I said, 'Andy, maybe it's enough death now.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'Well, how about this?' I opened a magazine to four flowers'
(H. Geldzahler, quoted in T. Scherman & D. Dalton, Andy Warhol: His Controversial Life, in Art and Colourful Times, London 2010, p. 225).
'With Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we're doing my Flower period! Like Monet's water lilies, Van Gogh's flowers, the genre'
(G. Malanga, quoted in D. Dalton, A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, London 2003, p. 74).
A vintage work from the beginnings of Pop Art, Andy Warhol's red Flowers literally pops off the canvas against its complimentary grassy green background. With its frontal viewpoint and cropped composition that omits any ground or horizon line, the artist dispenses with any sort of controlled sense of space, allowing the flowers to enter our space with figure and ground alternating rhythmically. Flowers marries the two painterly traditions that have defined Warhol's practice: silkscreened flowers in 'fire red' and a hand painted green background. Flowers is only one of five executed on a scale of 14 x 14, conceived by the artist in this pulsating combination recorded in the artist's catalogue raisonné.
Warhol's silkscreen Flowers series of 1964 was the culmination of a long progression of great series by the artist from his Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola Bottles to his celebrity portraits of Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe to his Death & Disaster images. This was a crucial fulcrum point both in terms of content and of reception: Warhol's first one-man show at Leo Castelli's gallery in New York in November 1964 featured a number of variations of the Flowers theme, which was met with instant acclaim from a range of sources. At the same time, the apparent positive change in direction, with Warhol turning from Death & Disaster to day-glo colors and cheerier subject matter of Flowers was welcomed.
This change had apparently come about in part because of a visit to Warhol's studio by the legendary museum director, Henry Geldzahler, one of the greatest sponsors and advocates of Pop art. 'I looked around the studio and it was all Marilyn and disasters and death,' Geldzahler recalled. 'I said, 'Andy, maybe it's enough death now.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'Well, how about this?' I opened a magazine to four flowers' (H. Geldzahler, quoted in T. Scherman & D. Dalton, Andy Warhol: His Controversial Life, Art and Colourful Times, London 2010, p. 225).
In a wry postmodern turn, Flowers represent a visual shift from his Death & Disaster images but continue the enquiry into death, beauty and celebrity, which had come to epitomize Warhol's style. In this way, Flowers can be seen as a natural progression from his Death & Disaster images.
As the quintessential image of ephemerality, the flower belongs to a long art historical tradition of still-life painting and vanitas, a sombre symbol of life's transience. In this way, Flowers, like so many of Warhol's other works, and indeed like so many of the floral still life compositions of the Old Master tradition, can be seen as a memento mori. 'With Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we're doing my Flower period! Like Monet's water lilies, Van Gogh's flowers, the genre' (G. Malanga, quoted in D. Dalton, A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, London 2003, p. 74).The Flowers series was made at the same time as some of Warhol's most haunting media imagery from his Jackie series made in the immediate aftermath of JFK's assassination. Indeed forty-two silkscreened Jackie's were hung alongside his Flowers at Castelli's. This is a recurring motif by Warhol who made his Marilyn series from an earlier press shot but painted it just after her death in 1962 and his Jackie series, executed in the wake of the assassination of JFK in 1963. The feeling of foreboding is only further amplified through the overwhelmingly dark encroachment of the blades of grass, making Flowers of 1964 a seemingly natural continuation from Warhol's Death & Disaster images.
Warhol elaborated on the idea of showing different variations of the flower theme more than he had with many of his earlier subjects. Indeed, when the Flowers series was selected as the theme for a show to be held at Ileanna Sonnabend's gallery in Paris in May 1965, he began, even while the Castelli exhibit was still going, to create Flowers in a number of sizes. These were 22 x 22 inches, 14 x 14 (as is the case in the present work), 8 x 8 and 5 x 5. At Sonnabend, Warhol would show a number of Flowers of different sizes. Flowers is all the more rare as it appears not to have been related directly to either the Castelli or the Sonnabend shows, but is instead a standalone work. This work has now been dated to 1965, although previously ascribed to circa 1964 by the Andy Warhol Foundation.
(H. Geldzahler, quoted in T. Scherman & D. Dalton, Andy Warhol: His Controversial Life, in Art and Colourful Times, London 2010, p. 225).
'With Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we're doing my Flower period! Like Monet's water lilies, Van Gogh's flowers, the genre'
(G. Malanga, quoted in D. Dalton, A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, London 2003, p. 74).
A vintage work from the beginnings of Pop Art, Andy Warhol's red Flowers literally pops off the canvas against its complimentary grassy green background. With its frontal viewpoint and cropped composition that omits any ground or horizon line, the artist dispenses with any sort of controlled sense of space, allowing the flowers to enter our space with figure and ground alternating rhythmically. Flowers marries the two painterly traditions that have defined Warhol's practice: silkscreened flowers in 'fire red' and a hand painted green background. Flowers is only one of five executed on a scale of 14 x 14, conceived by the artist in this pulsating combination recorded in the artist's catalogue raisonné.
Warhol's silkscreen Flowers series of 1964 was the culmination of a long progression of great series by the artist from his Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola Bottles to his celebrity portraits of Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe to his Death & Disaster images. This was a crucial fulcrum point both in terms of content and of reception: Warhol's first one-man show at Leo Castelli's gallery in New York in November 1964 featured a number of variations of the Flowers theme, which was met with instant acclaim from a range of sources. At the same time, the apparent positive change in direction, with Warhol turning from Death & Disaster to day-glo colors and cheerier subject matter of Flowers was welcomed.
This change had apparently come about in part because of a visit to Warhol's studio by the legendary museum director, Henry Geldzahler, one of the greatest sponsors and advocates of Pop art. 'I looked around the studio and it was all Marilyn and disasters and death,' Geldzahler recalled. 'I said, 'Andy, maybe it's enough death now.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'Well, how about this?' I opened a magazine to four flowers' (H. Geldzahler, quoted in T. Scherman & D. Dalton, Andy Warhol: His Controversial Life, Art and Colourful Times, London 2010, p. 225).
In a wry postmodern turn, Flowers represent a visual shift from his Death & Disaster images but continue the enquiry into death, beauty and celebrity, which had come to epitomize Warhol's style. In this way, Flowers can be seen as a natural progression from his Death & Disaster images.
As the quintessential image of ephemerality, the flower belongs to a long art historical tradition of still-life painting and vanitas, a sombre symbol of life's transience. In this way, Flowers, like so many of Warhol's other works, and indeed like so many of the floral still life compositions of the Old Master tradition, can be seen as a memento mori. 'With Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we're doing my Flower period! Like Monet's water lilies, Van Gogh's flowers, the genre' (G. Malanga, quoted in D. Dalton, A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, London 2003, p. 74).The Flowers series was made at the same time as some of Warhol's most haunting media imagery from his Jackie series made in the immediate aftermath of JFK's assassination. Indeed forty-two silkscreened Jackie's were hung alongside his Flowers at Castelli's. This is a recurring motif by Warhol who made his Marilyn series from an earlier press shot but painted it just after her death in 1962 and his Jackie series, executed in the wake of the assassination of JFK in 1963. The feeling of foreboding is only further amplified through the overwhelmingly dark encroachment of the blades of grass, making Flowers of 1964 a seemingly natural continuation from Warhol's Death & Disaster images.
Warhol elaborated on the idea of showing different variations of the flower theme more than he had with many of his earlier subjects. Indeed, when the Flowers series was selected as the theme for a show to be held at Ileanna Sonnabend's gallery in Paris in May 1965, he began, even while the Castelli exhibit was still going, to create Flowers in a number of sizes. These were 22 x 22 inches, 14 x 14 (as is the case in the present work), 8 x 8 and 5 x 5. At Sonnabend, Warhol would show a number of Flowers of different sizes. Flowers is all the more rare as it appears not to have been related directly to either the Castelli or the Sonnabend shows, but is instead a standalone work. This work has now been dated to 1965, although previously ascribed to circa 1964 by the Andy Warhol Foundation.