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拍品专文
Executed in 1983, Pia Zadora bears every trace of Warhol’s most celebrated and iconic working methods. Rendered in flat, silkscreened layers of dazzling yellow gold and red, the Hoboken-born actress—who had won a Golden Globe for ‘New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture’ two years earlier—stares coolly out from the canvas. The work belongs to Warhol’s acclaimed series of ‘Society Portraits’, a systematised mode of portrait production which the artist honed to a slick operation during the 1970s. Capturing the likenesses of actresses, rockstars, politicians, businessmen, starlets and even royalty, Warhol’s series of large, square-format canvases constitutes an almost encyclopaedic visual catalogue of the upper echelons. Harnessing the technologies of the instant, readymade photograph within his portraits, these works draw on the contemporary language of the mass-produced, recalling imagery from glossy magazines, newspapers and Hollywood films. Resuscitating 20th-century portraiture in America after a succession of non-figurative artistic movements—Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Conceptualism—Warhol’s Pop revitalisation of the genre is one of his greatest legacies.
After a decade silk-screening iconic Campbell soup cans, dollar bills and Coca-Cola bottles in the 1960s, Warhol turned to the celebrity—arguably America’s most revered commodity. Already captured and consumed, if not devoured, by popular visual culture and media, the society portrait provided Warhol all-exclusive access to the world of the rich and famous. The series forms his single largest body of work, and, executed exactly two decades after his first commissioned portrait of art collector Ethel Scull in 1963, Pia Zadora stands as testament to one of the artist’s most enduring preoccupations. By the time of our work in the early 1980s, Robert Rosenblum has argued that Warhol himself ‘had become a celebrity among celebrities’, taking on the role of the ‘ideal court painter to this 1970s international aristocracy’ (H. Geldzahler and R. Rosenblum, Andy Warhol: Portraits of the Seventies and Eighties, exh. cat. Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London 1993, p. 144). Conjuring a rich lineage of courtly and society portraitists from Singer Sargent to Van Dyke, Warhol’s works trace his own accelerated movement through high society. Indeed, known for obsessively recording his encounters with a tape recorder, and documenting interactions in his diary, in an entry from Thursday 28th July 1983, Warhol wrote: ‘Got up early and had to move fast because I had an early appointment at the office with Pia Zadora, so I was excited’ (A. Warhol quoted in P. Hackett (ed.), The Andy Warhol diaries, New York 1991, p. 517).
The portraits began with photographs taken by Warhol with a Polaroid Big Shot camera in his ‘Factory’ on Union Square, Manhattan. Enjoying the rudimentary appearance of its stark flash and fixed focus, Warhol often exaggerated its flattening effects by applying white based foundation and bright cosmetics to his sitters. In lieu of the traditional portraitist’s preparatory sketch, Warhol’s use of the inexpensive instant camera offered him equivalent immediacy with his subject, resulting in works with surprising glimmers of personality amidst a graphic, Pop surface. Zadora’s recollection of sitting for Warhol in the summer of 1983 captures the disarming intimacy of the process: ‘I was used to posing for photographers. But he said, “Sit in the corner and be yourself.” Well, who am I?’ (P. Zadora quoted in B. Sokol, ‘Show Us Your Warhol!’, The New York Times, 1 November 2018). Printing his favourite of the polaroids to acetates, Warhol would set to work, meticulously retouching his sitters’ faces, erasing the texture of fine lines and wrinkles to create smooth planes of dimension. On this occasion Warhol selected two photographs of Zadora to print from, suggesting a marked interest in her. He was particular about printing onto standardised canvases of 40 by 40 inches, envisaging an eventual, monumental display of the series side-by-side in a comprehensive ‘Portrait of Society’. Charged with the seductive glamour of a cosmetics advert, Pia Zadora attests to Warhol’s pleasure in rendering eyes and lips. He insisted that Zadora wore red lipstick for the shoot, and went on to accentuate the actress’s glossy pout, hand-painting a reflective shine in white acrylic. Submitting her image to Warhol’s well-oiled production line, here, Zadora is immortalised under a perfect sheen of brightly-coloured paint.
After a decade silk-screening iconic Campbell soup cans, dollar bills and Coca-Cola bottles in the 1960s, Warhol turned to the celebrity—arguably America’s most revered commodity. Already captured and consumed, if not devoured, by popular visual culture and media, the society portrait provided Warhol all-exclusive access to the world of the rich and famous. The series forms his single largest body of work, and, executed exactly two decades after his first commissioned portrait of art collector Ethel Scull in 1963, Pia Zadora stands as testament to one of the artist’s most enduring preoccupations. By the time of our work in the early 1980s, Robert Rosenblum has argued that Warhol himself ‘had become a celebrity among celebrities’, taking on the role of the ‘ideal court painter to this 1970s international aristocracy’ (H. Geldzahler and R. Rosenblum, Andy Warhol: Portraits of the Seventies and Eighties, exh. cat. Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London 1993, p. 144). Conjuring a rich lineage of courtly and society portraitists from Singer Sargent to Van Dyke, Warhol’s works trace his own accelerated movement through high society. Indeed, known for obsessively recording his encounters with a tape recorder, and documenting interactions in his diary, in an entry from Thursday 28th July 1983, Warhol wrote: ‘Got up early and had to move fast because I had an early appointment at the office with Pia Zadora, so I was excited’ (A. Warhol quoted in P. Hackett (ed.), The Andy Warhol diaries, New York 1991, p. 517).
The portraits began with photographs taken by Warhol with a Polaroid Big Shot camera in his ‘Factory’ on Union Square, Manhattan. Enjoying the rudimentary appearance of its stark flash and fixed focus, Warhol often exaggerated its flattening effects by applying white based foundation and bright cosmetics to his sitters. In lieu of the traditional portraitist’s preparatory sketch, Warhol’s use of the inexpensive instant camera offered him equivalent immediacy with his subject, resulting in works with surprising glimmers of personality amidst a graphic, Pop surface. Zadora’s recollection of sitting for Warhol in the summer of 1983 captures the disarming intimacy of the process: ‘I was used to posing for photographers. But he said, “Sit in the corner and be yourself.” Well, who am I?’ (P. Zadora quoted in B. Sokol, ‘Show Us Your Warhol!’, The New York Times, 1 November 2018). Printing his favourite of the polaroids to acetates, Warhol would set to work, meticulously retouching his sitters’ faces, erasing the texture of fine lines and wrinkles to create smooth planes of dimension. On this occasion Warhol selected two photographs of Zadora to print from, suggesting a marked interest in her. He was particular about printing onto standardised canvases of 40 by 40 inches, envisaging an eventual, monumental display of the series side-by-side in a comprehensive ‘Portrait of Society’. Charged with the seductive glamour of a cosmetics advert, Pia Zadora attests to Warhol’s pleasure in rendering eyes and lips. He insisted that Zadora wore red lipstick for the shoot, and went on to accentuate the actress’s glossy pout, hand-painting a reflective shine in white acrylic. Submitting her image to Warhol’s well-oiled production line, here, Zadora is immortalised under a perfect sheen of brightly-coloured paint.