.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘How can you say one style is better than another? You ought to be able to be an Abstract Expressionist next week, or a Pop artist, or a realist, without feeling you’ve given up something. I think that would be so great, to be able to change styles. And I think that’s what’s is going to happen, that’s going to be the whole new scene.’ – Andy Warhol
‘It became almost a sort of performance. Like an Yves Klein kind of thing; with women rolling on the canvas. We would instead bring in boys and girls and have them standing on the big canvases. So the studio would become like a toilet, a giant urinal.’ – Ronnie Cutrone
‘I told Ronnie [Cutrone] not to pee when he gets up in the morning – to try to hold it until he gets to the office, because he takes lots of vitamin B so the canvas turns a really pretty colour when it’s his piss.’ – Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol’s Oxidation paintings are wonderfully paradoxical, at once aesthetically rich and delightedly, and drolly, transgressive. With its coppery iridescence and spontaneous greens, Oxidation Painting, 1978, is an especially striking example from the series. A splash of metallic greens erupts onto the canvas, a shimmering and triumphant burst. Although Oxidation Painting presents a painterly dynamism, Warhol’s methods for realizing the composition were decidedly and notoriously grimy: he would ask members of The Factory or visiting friends to urinate on the copper coated canvases, ultimately reinforcing the communal ethos of the studio. Over time, the reaction of urine on copper resulted in swirling patinas, producing a bold and original take on abstraction, as well as a parody of Jackson Pollock’s pours and splashes. Casually referred to as the ‘piss paintings’, Warhol worked on the Oxidation series for one year only, between 1977 and 1978, although it is possible he tested out the method in
1962, but any work produced is no longer extant. Oxidation Painting exemplifies the abstraction that dominated his practice from the late 1970s until his death in 1987. Although he experimented with a variety of non-figurative techniques in the Shadow and Camouflage series, Oxidation was his only unique method of creating. While urinating itself might seem to require little actual skill, Warhol ironically insisted on and emphasized artistic skill, explaining that ‘they had technique too. If I asked someone to do an Oxidation painting, and they just wouldn’t think about it, it would just be a mess. Then I did it myself – it’s just too much work – and you try to figure out a good design’ (A. Warhol quoted in I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, ed. K. Goldsmith, Cambridge, MA, 2004, p. 327). Indeed, he even had preferred participants, favouring the work of his assistant Ronny Cutrone. So inspired was he by the effects achieved, that Warhol briefly experimented by painting with urine, an effort he found
difficult and quickly abandoned. Warhol used the Oxidation paintings as a means of reasserting his vanguard status and to challenge the dominance of Abstract Expressionist conventions, long seen as a paradigm of artistic originality. Famed for his rebellious persona as much as for his ground-breaking canvases, Jackson Pollock allegedly urinated on canvases before giving them to clients he disliked. Warhol apparently found Pollock’s macho swagger ridiculous and unbearable, saying ‘I asked Larry [Rivers] about Jackson Pollock. ‘Pollock? Socially he was a real jerk,’ Larry said. ‘Very unpleasant to be around.’’ (A. Warhol quoted in Andy Warhol: The Late Work, Munich, 2004, p. 91). Characteristically, the spectacle was an essential part of Warhol’s boundary pushing work, and the Oxidation series itself was somewhat of a performance. In Oxidation Painting, the green splatter dances across the surface, impulsive, demonstrative and exuberant.
‘It became almost a sort of performance. Like an Yves Klein kind of thing; with women rolling on the canvas. We would instead bring in boys and girls and have them standing on the big canvases. So the studio would become like a toilet, a giant urinal.’ – Ronnie Cutrone
‘I told Ronnie [Cutrone] not to pee when he gets up in the morning – to try to hold it until he gets to the office, because he takes lots of vitamin B so the canvas turns a really pretty colour when it’s his piss.’ – Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol’s Oxidation paintings are wonderfully paradoxical, at once aesthetically rich and delightedly, and drolly, transgressive. With its coppery iridescence and spontaneous greens, Oxidation Painting, 1978, is an especially striking example from the series. A splash of metallic greens erupts onto the canvas, a shimmering and triumphant burst. Although Oxidation Painting presents a painterly dynamism, Warhol’s methods for realizing the composition were decidedly and notoriously grimy: he would ask members of The Factory or visiting friends to urinate on the copper coated canvases, ultimately reinforcing the communal ethos of the studio. Over time, the reaction of urine on copper resulted in swirling patinas, producing a bold and original take on abstraction, as well as a parody of Jackson Pollock’s pours and splashes. Casually referred to as the ‘piss paintings’, Warhol worked on the Oxidation series for one year only, between 1977 and 1978, although it is possible he tested out the method in
1962, but any work produced is no longer extant. Oxidation Painting exemplifies the abstraction that dominated his practice from the late 1970s until his death in 1987. Although he experimented with a variety of non-figurative techniques in the Shadow and Camouflage series, Oxidation was his only unique method of creating. While urinating itself might seem to require little actual skill, Warhol ironically insisted on and emphasized artistic skill, explaining that ‘they had technique too. If I asked someone to do an Oxidation painting, and they just wouldn’t think about it, it would just be a mess. Then I did it myself – it’s just too much work – and you try to figure out a good design’ (A. Warhol quoted in I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, ed. K. Goldsmith, Cambridge, MA, 2004, p. 327). Indeed, he even had preferred participants, favouring the work of his assistant Ronny Cutrone. So inspired was he by the effects achieved, that Warhol briefly experimented by painting with urine, an effort he found
difficult and quickly abandoned. Warhol used the Oxidation paintings as a means of reasserting his vanguard status and to challenge the dominance of Abstract Expressionist conventions, long seen as a paradigm of artistic originality. Famed for his rebellious persona as much as for his ground-breaking canvases, Jackson Pollock allegedly urinated on canvases before giving them to clients he disliked. Warhol apparently found Pollock’s macho swagger ridiculous and unbearable, saying ‘I asked Larry [Rivers] about Jackson Pollock. ‘Pollock? Socially he was a real jerk,’ Larry said. ‘Very unpleasant to be around.’’ (A. Warhol quoted in Andy Warhol: The Late Work, Munich, 2004, p. 91). Characteristically, the spectacle was an essential part of Warhol’s boundary pushing work, and the Oxidation series itself was somewhat of a performance. In Oxidation Painting, the green splatter dances across the surface, impulsive, demonstrative and exuberant.