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拍品专文
“They are so goddamn beautiful. And so simple. And their glamour was so intense…. And why not? Who bought it as a picture of flowers anyway? It was about the mediation...That’s why we reach for the word ‘genius.’ Genius is what goes, ‘That’s not a problem.’ [Warhol] sees clearly. He just does it” (P. Schjeldahl, quoted in T. Sherman and D. Dalton, POP: The Genius of Andy Warhol, New York, 2009, pp. 236-237).
First commissioned by New York collecting royalty Ethel and Robert Scull in the early 1960s, the present Flowers painting tells a story of Warholian history in four friendly flowers perched atop a monochrome grassy background. Reveling in two different shades of the artist’s rare and iconic blues, the separate floral forms assume sacred status, emphasized against an elegant black and white ground that reads like a well-loved newspaper or vintage film reel. Black and white reminds of the long lost days of yore, when entertainment lived in Saturday night specials on the cable television, and news traveled only as fast as the paperboy could pedal. Like the hand that selected it, Warhol’s lapis lazuli bursts onto the quaint scene in technicolor, opening up a world of kaleidoscopic possibilities and just in time for a new era in art, politics and pop culture.
Warhol himself entered a new era in his oeuvre with the revelation of the Flowers series, first suggested by renowned curator Henry Geldzahler who was tired of the artist’s prior obsession with destruction and the glamorous darkside: “…I looked around the studio and it was all Marilyn and disasters and death. 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. Sherman and D. Dalton, POP: The Genius of Andy Warhol, New York, 2009, p. 235). After years of painting prisoners, race riots and woebegone starlets, Warhol turned his attention to the ultimate subject of still-life – simultaneously turning over a new leaf while engaging with his art historical roots. Since the time of the Dutch masters, the flower, in various states of life and decay, has presented itself for study through imagery. Whether a hyperrealist close-up or post-impressionist landscape, artist after artist has tried his or her hand at the material, leaving clusters of blooms littered across the pages of art history. Warhol’s flower period, then, is as career-defining as that of Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet, as hinted by the artist’s longtime studio assistant Gerard Malanga who worked closely on the Flowers (G. Malanga, quoted in A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, New York, 2003, p. 74). In their own aromatic way, Warhol’s Flowers have insinuated themselves not only into a rich history of art, but also into the annals of inescapable visual culture.
Warhol’s fascination with reproducibility finds its ultimate conclusion in the present series of paintings, each Flowers canvas acting as an independent tessera in a larger, all-encompassing, overwhelming acrylic and silkscreen mosaic.
The present picture is one of presumably thirty-five examples screened directly onto the twenty-two inch primed canvas, differentiated in technique and dimensions from the collection of Flowers that overtook New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery in 1964 and in dimensions along from the works that adorned Ileana Sonnabend’s Paris space in 1965. Twenty-four of these 22-inch works, including the present lot, were set apart for installation in the Sculls’ second home, before being returned to Castelli for inventorying. As of the 2004 publication of the second volume of the artist’s catalogue raisonné, pictures corresponding to twelve of the Castelli inventory numbers had yet to be identified, one of which is now known to be the present painting, which was inscribed with “LC (722)” on the original stretcher. Likely the cause of its heretofore unknown whereabouts, Flowers (1964/1965) was acquired by a private collection around four decades ago and has been in the same hands since. Only one of the other Flowers in this series illustrated in the catalogue raisonné features all four blossoms in variations of blue, a color Warhol reserved for his haunting portraits of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, and which remains rare in private hands: “Whether the chromatic diversity of the Scull painting was a condition of size, chronology, or of the commission itself is difficult to say; nonetheless, they initiate a coloristic practice that Warhol would progressively develop between 1965 and 1967” (G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, vol. 2B, New York, 2004, p. 27).
Equally a development in color as it is in production method, the present work is rendered in subsequent layers of silkscreen, the registration marks of each individual application of ink over acetate at one time visible on the tacking margins of the canvas. At this time, Warhol was working in a midtown Manhattan studio familiarly dubbed the Factory for its seemingly ceaseless mechanical output of art objects as products for consumption. Rather than eschewing the commercial marketplace, Warhol embraced trade as an art in and of itself, famously declaring: “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. …making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art” (A. Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again, New York, 1975, p. 92). Good business was first outfitting Ethel and Robert Scull with a set of thirty-five canvas portraits of Ethel for their New York apartment, inciting the desire for a second wall of Warhol, this time in the recently revealed flower motif. Warhol’s fascination with reproducibility finds its ultimate conclusion in the present series of paintings, each Flowers canvas acting as an independent tessera in a larger, all-encompassing, overwhelming acrylic and silkscreen mosaic. Thus, Flowers is a tangible piece of history, a tile of time, having lived with the Sculls, Leo Castelli, James Corcoran and finding its forty-year home as part of an astute private collection. The painting’s sequel is now just waiting to be screened.
First commissioned by New York collecting royalty Ethel and Robert Scull in the early 1960s, the present Flowers painting tells a story of Warholian history in four friendly flowers perched atop a monochrome grassy background. Reveling in two different shades of the artist’s rare and iconic blues, the separate floral forms assume sacred status, emphasized against an elegant black and white ground that reads like a well-loved newspaper or vintage film reel. Black and white reminds of the long lost days of yore, when entertainment lived in Saturday night specials on the cable television, and news traveled only as fast as the paperboy could pedal. Like the hand that selected it, Warhol’s lapis lazuli bursts onto the quaint scene in technicolor, opening up a world of kaleidoscopic possibilities and just in time for a new era in art, politics and pop culture.
Warhol himself entered a new era in his oeuvre with the revelation of the Flowers series, first suggested by renowned curator Henry Geldzahler who was tired of the artist’s prior obsession with destruction and the glamorous darkside: “…I looked around the studio and it was all Marilyn and disasters and death. 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. Sherman and D. Dalton, POP: The Genius of Andy Warhol, New York, 2009, p. 235). After years of painting prisoners, race riots and woebegone starlets, Warhol turned his attention to the ultimate subject of still-life – simultaneously turning over a new leaf while engaging with his art historical roots. Since the time of the Dutch masters, the flower, in various states of life and decay, has presented itself for study through imagery. Whether a hyperrealist close-up or post-impressionist landscape, artist after artist has tried his or her hand at the material, leaving clusters of blooms littered across the pages of art history. Warhol’s flower period, then, is as career-defining as that of Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet, as hinted by the artist’s longtime studio assistant Gerard Malanga who worked closely on the Flowers (G. Malanga, quoted in A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, New York, 2003, p. 74). In their own aromatic way, Warhol’s Flowers have insinuated themselves not only into a rich history of art, but also into the annals of inescapable visual culture.
Warhol’s fascination with reproducibility finds its ultimate conclusion in the present series of paintings, each Flowers canvas acting as an independent tessera in a larger, all-encompassing, overwhelming acrylic and silkscreen mosaic.
The present picture is one of presumably thirty-five examples screened directly onto the twenty-two inch primed canvas, differentiated in technique and dimensions from the collection of Flowers that overtook New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery in 1964 and in dimensions along from the works that adorned Ileana Sonnabend’s Paris space in 1965. Twenty-four of these 22-inch works, including the present lot, were set apart for installation in the Sculls’ second home, before being returned to Castelli for inventorying. As of the 2004 publication of the second volume of the artist’s catalogue raisonné, pictures corresponding to twelve of the Castelli inventory numbers had yet to be identified, one of which is now known to be the present painting, which was inscribed with “LC (722)” on the original stretcher. Likely the cause of its heretofore unknown whereabouts, Flowers (1964/1965) was acquired by a private collection around four decades ago and has been in the same hands since. Only one of the other Flowers in this series illustrated in the catalogue raisonné features all four blossoms in variations of blue, a color Warhol reserved for his haunting portraits of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, and which remains rare in private hands: “Whether the chromatic diversity of the Scull painting was a condition of size, chronology, or of the commission itself is difficult to say; nonetheless, they initiate a coloristic practice that Warhol would progressively develop between 1965 and 1967” (G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, vol. 2B, New York, 2004, p. 27).
Equally a development in color as it is in production method, the present work is rendered in subsequent layers of silkscreen, the registration marks of each individual application of ink over acetate at one time visible on the tacking margins of the canvas. At this time, Warhol was working in a midtown Manhattan studio familiarly dubbed the Factory for its seemingly ceaseless mechanical output of art objects as products for consumption. Rather than eschewing the commercial marketplace, Warhol embraced trade as an art in and of itself, famously declaring: “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. …making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art” (A. Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again, New York, 1975, p. 92). Good business was first outfitting Ethel and Robert Scull with a set of thirty-five canvas portraits of Ethel for their New York apartment, inciting the desire for a second wall of Warhol, this time in the recently revealed flower motif. Warhol’s fascination with reproducibility finds its ultimate conclusion in the present series of paintings, each Flowers canvas acting as an independent tessera in a larger, all-encompassing, overwhelming acrylic and silkscreen mosaic. Thus, Flowers is a tangible piece of history, a tile of time, having lived with the Sculls, Leo Castelli, James Corcoran and finding its forty-year home as part of an astute private collection. The painting’s sequel is now just waiting to be screened.