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拍品专文
'I want to be as famous as the Queen of England' (A. Warhol, quoted in M. Fallon, How to Analyze the Work of Andy Warhol, Edina, 2011, p. 15).
This magnificent portrait of Britain's Queen Elizabeth is one of the most striking works that Warhol completed during the 1980s. Larger than life-size and resonating with colour and vitality, this image stands as Warhol's personal tribute to one of the most famous women in the world. Throughout his life Warhol had been fascinated by celebrity and fame, and had expended much of his energy trying to find the spotlight and to stay firmly in it. With Queen Elizabeth he became entranced by a woman whose status and power had been ordained from birth. Resplendent against a background of regal blue, Warhol renders the Queen's features in shades of emerald green and purple with highlight accents of neon red and white. Painted nearly a decade after the national celebrations for the Queen's Silver Jubilee (the source image is the official photographic portrait from that year), this work demonstrates Warhol's considerable technical skill and aesthetic vision to produce not only a radically different interpretation of one of the most famous women in the world, but also to re-examine the conventions of portraiture itself.
This portrait of Queen Elizabeth is distinguished by both its size and chromatic intensity. It features a commanding image of the Queen confronting the viewer face on, unlike the oblique angle employed in many other royal portraits. The choice of rich blue monochrome for both the background and the Queen's hair forces our attention onto her face which is rendered in a lighter tone of mauve that appears radiant against the darker ground. Within the face, Warhol highlights the eyes and lips; features he places like a sparkling ruby and glowing sapphires in the setting of this magisterial visage. All these features are further enhanced by Warhol's use of neon highlights which emphasize the contours of the Queen's face and jewellry. With this portrait, Warhol democratizes the persona of the Queen implying that much of her power and influence is derived from her strength and charisma as an individual.
Reigning Queens: Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom was created in 1985 and forms a part of Warhol's celebrated series from that year, Reigning Queens. This consisted of portraits of four female monarchs in their own right (rather than those married to a King): Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Queen Ntombi of Swaziland (Queen Ntombi was in fact regent in 1985, holding power for her son, the Crown Prince, before he came of age; however, she remains the Joint Head of State, or ndlovukati ('Great She-Elephant'), to this day).
This series brings together many of Warhol's central themes - celebrity, portraiture, consumerism, decoration and the extremes of social hierarchy. Warhol's portraits are often about the public face or surface image, and this is a prodigious example. Warhol once predicted that everyone would be 'famous for fifteen minutes' but Queen Elizabeth has outlasted this prediction by a margin of more than 60 years. Accepted by the Guinness Book of Records as the Most Recognisable Person in the World, the image of the Queen has been reproduced more times that anyone else in history, making her the ultimate subject for Warhol's obsession with fame and celebrity. Although the Queen regularly commissions portraits by distinguished artists such as Lucian Freud, Warhol's depiction is unique amongst these, because she neither sat for it nor commissioned it.
Warhol was fascinated by repetition, the mass-production of images, and since Alexander the Great, monarchs and emperors have mass-produced and circulated their images on coins for their subjects to see. In 1977 Elizabeth celebrated 25 years as Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the dozens of countries and territories around the world of which she was head of state. In Britain, an unseasonably hot summer resulted in millions of people celebrated the event with a series of parades and street parties that took place in towns and villages across the land. The official portrait was a photograph taken a year earlier by royal photographer Paul Grugeon. This image of the Queen appeared everywhere-on flags, bunting, t-shirts and souvenir mugs, plates, stamps and posters. It became one of the most recognizable images of the year and spawned numerous re-interpretations beside Warhol's -most noticeably the iconic album cover designed by Jamie Reed for the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen which became the unofficial anthem of the punk movement. Thus, this particular image became the perfect subject for Warhol's insightful observations on popular culture. Painted nearly a decade after the Silver Jubilee celebrations, Warhol's version uses a spectrum of carnival colours and measured silkscreen printing techniques to flaunt the repetitious nature of the image.
As the King of Pop, it was only natural that Warhol should turn to these celebrated queens as his subjects. Early in his career, Warhol had taken the dollar bill as a source, as well as the various starlets and celebrities of his day; now, he was taking people whose features were reproduced on the currency of their nations. Just like Chairman Mao a decade and a half earlier, Warhol was selecting source material that was already prevalent, yet unlike the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Reigning Queens: Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom perfectly encapsulates the fairytale glamour that so enthralled Warhol within the world of celebrity and the international aristocracy to which his own fame had given him access.
This magnificent portrait of Britain's Queen Elizabeth is one of the most striking works that Warhol completed during the 1980s. Larger than life-size and resonating with colour and vitality, this image stands as Warhol's personal tribute to one of the most famous women in the world. Throughout his life Warhol had been fascinated by celebrity and fame, and had expended much of his energy trying to find the spotlight and to stay firmly in it. With Queen Elizabeth he became entranced by a woman whose status and power had been ordained from birth. Resplendent against a background of regal blue, Warhol renders the Queen's features in shades of emerald green and purple with highlight accents of neon red and white. Painted nearly a decade after the national celebrations for the Queen's Silver Jubilee (the source image is the official photographic portrait from that year), this work demonstrates Warhol's considerable technical skill and aesthetic vision to produce not only a radically different interpretation of one of the most famous women in the world, but also to re-examine the conventions of portraiture itself.
This portrait of Queen Elizabeth is distinguished by both its size and chromatic intensity. It features a commanding image of the Queen confronting the viewer face on, unlike the oblique angle employed in many other royal portraits. The choice of rich blue monochrome for both the background and the Queen's hair forces our attention onto her face which is rendered in a lighter tone of mauve that appears radiant against the darker ground. Within the face, Warhol highlights the eyes and lips; features he places like a sparkling ruby and glowing sapphires in the setting of this magisterial visage. All these features are further enhanced by Warhol's use of neon highlights which emphasize the contours of the Queen's face and jewellry. With this portrait, Warhol democratizes the persona of the Queen implying that much of her power and influence is derived from her strength and charisma as an individual.
Reigning Queens: Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom was created in 1985 and forms a part of Warhol's celebrated series from that year, Reigning Queens. This consisted of portraits of four female monarchs in their own right (rather than those married to a King): Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Queen Ntombi of Swaziland (Queen Ntombi was in fact regent in 1985, holding power for her son, the Crown Prince, before he came of age; however, she remains the Joint Head of State, or ndlovukati ('Great She-Elephant'), to this day).
This series brings together many of Warhol's central themes - celebrity, portraiture, consumerism, decoration and the extremes of social hierarchy. Warhol's portraits are often about the public face or surface image, and this is a prodigious example. Warhol once predicted that everyone would be 'famous for fifteen minutes' but Queen Elizabeth has outlasted this prediction by a margin of more than 60 years. Accepted by the Guinness Book of Records as the Most Recognisable Person in the World, the image of the Queen has been reproduced more times that anyone else in history, making her the ultimate subject for Warhol's obsession with fame and celebrity. Although the Queen regularly commissions portraits by distinguished artists such as Lucian Freud, Warhol's depiction is unique amongst these, because she neither sat for it nor commissioned it.
Warhol was fascinated by repetition, the mass-production of images, and since Alexander the Great, monarchs and emperors have mass-produced and circulated their images on coins for their subjects to see. In 1977 Elizabeth celebrated 25 years as Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the dozens of countries and territories around the world of which she was head of state. In Britain, an unseasonably hot summer resulted in millions of people celebrated the event with a series of parades and street parties that took place in towns and villages across the land. The official portrait was a photograph taken a year earlier by royal photographer Paul Grugeon. This image of the Queen appeared everywhere-on flags, bunting, t-shirts and souvenir mugs, plates, stamps and posters. It became one of the most recognizable images of the year and spawned numerous re-interpretations beside Warhol's -most noticeably the iconic album cover designed by Jamie Reed for the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen which became the unofficial anthem of the punk movement. Thus, this particular image became the perfect subject for Warhol's insightful observations on popular culture. Painted nearly a decade after the Silver Jubilee celebrations, Warhol's version uses a spectrum of carnival colours and measured silkscreen printing techniques to flaunt the repetitious nature of the image.
As the King of Pop, it was only natural that Warhol should turn to these celebrated queens as his subjects. Early in his career, Warhol had taken the dollar bill as a source, as well as the various starlets and celebrities of his day; now, he was taking people whose features were reproduced on the currency of their nations. Just like Chairman Mao a decade and a half earlier, Warhol was selecting source material that was already prevalent, yet unlike the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Reigning Queens: Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom perfectly encapsulates the fairytale glamour that so enthralled Warhol within the world of celebrity and the international aristocracy to which his own fame had given him access.