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Lot Essay
Across a vast expanse of canvas standing eight feet tall, the amorphous forms of Andy Warhol’s striking Rorschach propels the viewer into a pictorial and psychosomatic contemplation. Inspired by the ink blot test developed in the 1920s by the Swiss psychiatrist, Hermann Rorschach for psychological testing, Rorschach is a rare venture for the artistic into the world of abstraction. It is also a masterful rendering of Warhol’s exploration of chance, scale and fluidity which was to become an important aspect of his later work.
A glorious transmogrifying shape evolves across the surface of the canvas as Rorschach’s figure alters meaning and representation with each onlooker. The intricate flourishes of reflected black pools and bold silhouettes, painted and then printed on a monumental scale, confront each viewer individually. Weaving its elaborate silhouettes throughout the canvas, the black ink possesses an almost ominous force. The viewer of the Rorschach concurrently becomes Warhol’s patient and psychiatrist. An echo of our own yearnings, fantasies, and dreams, the composition can only ever be fully realized through the individual eyes of the observer. However, unaware that Rorschach’s psychological evaluations were based on a set of ten standardized tests, Warhol had originally believed that the ink blot was the creation of the patient to be read as part of a mystic process of self-revelation. Intrigued by his own perception of the Rorschach, as well as its intention to push the boundaries between abstraction, representation, and meaning, Warhol initially intended to record his readings of the Rorschach paintings he had created. “I was trying to do these to actually read into them and write about them,” he recalled, “but I never really had the time to do that. So I was going to hire somebody to read into them, to pretend that it was me, so that they’d be a little more interesting. Because all I would see would be a dog’s face or something like a tree or a bird or a flower. Somebody else could see a lot more. But maybe they shouldn’t have any reading into them at all. None at all” (A. Warhol, in J. D. Ketner II, Andy Warhol, The Last Decade, exh. cat., Milwaukee, 2009, p. 68). As the Rorschach paintings transform from beautiful abstracts to loose figurations of our own imaginations, we are simultaneously exploring the inner psyche of the artist’s mind during the time of their creation—Warhol psychological self-portrait.
Warhol instructed his assistant Jay Schriver, who initially suggested the idea of Rorschach blots, to make a series of ink blot studies from which he would model his large-scale paintings. Echoing the original blotted-line method that Warhol had applied in his drawings of the 1950s and early 60s, his new mirrored abstractions were achieved through a fundamental print making technique, folding an empty canvas over a freshly painted surface. “All my shoe drawings were done that way, with a blotted line,” Warhol recalled. “You could blot them together and get a repeat on the other side...The Rorschach tests were hard to do. I love [the] idea that
they don’t have a ‘look’ to them. They should actually look terrible. But I really worked hard to make them look interesting. It wasn’t easy” (A. Warhol, quoted in R. Nickas, “Andy Warhol’s Rorschach Test,” Arts Magazine, October, 1986).
In their brilliant drips, splashes and animated forms, the Rorschach paintings can be perceived as sophisticated parodies of Abstract Expressionism, much like the Oxidation paintings of the late 1970s. Warhol’s Oxidations and Rorschachs, accompanied by his Shadow and Camouflage paintings aim to encompass the same degree of shock and awe found within the canvases of the great Abstract Expressionists. As part of his unremitting challenging of artistic boundaries and his examination of the intrinsic dualities of abstraction and representation, this series is regarded as being among some of the most thoughtful and intellectual of his career. The uninhibited methods by which he created this important series testify to his perpetual desire to experiment with other types of art, even if he was railing against the conventional foundations of the very genre that he pioneered.
In an interpretation of Jackson Pollock’s drip method, Warhol poured black paint in abstract compositions onto one half of an unrolled canvas that had been laid out over the studio floor. “So each painting was a new creation,” explained Shriver. “We had these huge canvases that we had to fold over and press together so that the paint was evenly distributed on both halves of the canvas. We took some of the huge dowels, on which the canvases were shipped, and Andy, Augusto (Bugari), Benjamin (Liu) and myself would get on our hands and knees, rolling the dowels and patting the canvas to get an even pressure across the entire surface” (J. Shriver, quoted in J. D. Ketner II, op. cit., p. 45).
Warhol recalled of his Rorschach paintings, “Nothing can always be the subject of something. I mean, what’s nice about those paintings is you could do them every five years...anytime you wanted to, when you had the time...because there’s nothing to read into them...Because even if the paints stayed the same, everything else--and everyone else--would have changed” (A. Warhol, quoted in R. Dergan and L. Neri, (eds.), Cast a Cold Eye: The Late Work of Andy Warhol, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2006, p. 198). Through its subjective nature, the Rorschach test has become an image that transcends both time and place. Though primarily functioning as Warhol’s investigations of the history of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting, they remain as integrated into popular culture as never before. The viewer of the Rorschach today is met with the flawless beauty and enigmatic psyche of the artist’s original intent, now permeated with an element of Warhol’s pioneered Pop movement.
A glorious transmogrifying shape evolves across the surface of the canvas as Rorschach’s figure alters meaning and representation with each onlooker. The intricate flourishes of reflected black pools and bold silhouettes, painted and then printed on a monumental scale, confront each viewer individually. Weaving its elaborate silhouettes throughout the canvas, the black ink possesses an almost ominous force. The viewer of the Rorschach concurrently becomes Warhol’s patient and psychiatrist. An echo of our own yearnings, fantasies, and dreams, the composition can only ever be fully realized through the individual eyes of the observer. However, unaware that Rorschach’s psychological evaluations were based on a set of ten standardized tests, Warhol had originally believed that the ink blot was the creation of the patient to be read as part of a mystic process of self-revelation. Intrigued by his own perception of the Rorschach, as well as its intention to push the boundaries between abstraction, representation, and meaning, Warhol initially intended to record his readings of the Rorschach paintings he had created. “I was trying to do these to actually read into them and write about them,” he recalled, “but I never really had the time to do that. So I was going to hire somebody to read into them, to pretend that it was me, so that they’d be a little more interesting. Because all I would see would be a dog’s face or something like a tree or a bird or a flower. Somebody else could see a lot more. But maybe they shouldn’t have any reading into them at all. None at all” (A. Warhol, in J. D. Ketner II, Andy Warhol, The Last Decade, exh. cat., Milwaukee, 2009, p. 68). As the Rorschach paintings transform from beautiful abstracts to loose figurations of our own imaginations, we are simultaneously exploring the inner psyche of the artist’s mind during the time of their creation—Warhol psychological self-portrait.
Warhol instructed his assistant Jay Schriver, who initially suggested the idea of Rorschach blots, to make a series of ink blot studies from which he would model his large-scale paintings. Echoing the original blotted-line method that Warhol had applied in his drawings of the 1950s and early 60s, his new mirrored abstractions were achieved through a fundamental print making technique, folding an empty canvas over a freshly painted surface. “All my shoe drawings were done that way, with a blotted line,” Warhol recalled. “You could blot them together and get a repeat on the other side...The Rorschach tests were hard to do. I love [the] idea that
they don’t have a ‘look’ to them. They should actually look terrible. But I really worked hard to make them look interesting. It wasn’t easy” (A. Warhol, quoted in R. Nickas, “Andy Warhol’s Rorschach Test,” Arts Magazine, October, 1986).
In their brilliant drips, splashes and animated forms, the Rorschach paintings can be perceived as sophisticated parodies of Abstract Expressionism, much like the Oxidation paintings of the late 1970s. Warhol’s Oxidations and Rorschachs, accompanied by his Shadow and Camouflage paintings aim to encompass the same degree of shock and awe found within the canvases of the great Abstract Expressionists. As part of his unremitting challenging of artistic boundaries and his examination of the intrinsic dualities of abstraction and representation, this series is regarded as being among some of the most thoughtful and intellectual of his career. The uninhibited methods by which he created this important series testify to his perpetual desire to experiment with other types of art, even if he was railing against the conventional foundations of the very genre that he pioneered.
In an interpretation of Jackson Pollock’s drip method, Warhol poured black paint in abstract compositions onto one half of an unrolled canvas that had been laid out over the studio floor. “So each painting was a new creation,” explained Shriver. “We had these huge canvases that we had to fold over and press together so that the paint was evenly distributed on both halves of the canvas. We took some of the huge dowels, on which the canvases were shipped, and Andy, Augusto (Bugari), Benjamin (Liu) and myself would get on our hands and knees, rolling the dowels and patting the canvas to get an even pressure across the entire surface” (J. Shriver, quoted in J. D. Ketner II, op. cit., p. 45).
Warhol recalled of his Rorschach paintings, “Nothing can always be the subject of something. I mean, what’s nice about those paintings is you could do them every five years...anytime you wanted to, when you had the time...because there’s nothing to read into them...Because even if the paints stayed the same, everything else--and everyone else--would have changed” (A. Warhol, quoted in R. Dergan and L. Neri, (eds.), Cast a Cold Eye: The Late Work of Andy Warhol, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2006, p. 198). Through its subjective nature, the Rorschach test has become an image that transcends both time and place. Though primarily functioning as Warhol’s investigations of the history of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting, they remain as integrated into popular culture as never before. The viewer of the Rorschach today is met with the flawless beauty and enigmatic psyche of the artist’s original intent, now permeated with an element of Warhol’s pioneered Pop movement.