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拍品专文
“[The Flowers] are so goddamn beautiful. And so simple. And their glamour was so intense.” Peter Schjeldahl
Set against a monochromatic background, the four blooms in Andy Warhol’s Flowers reverberate off the surface of the canvas with an exuberant energy. This combination of all red flowers set against a black-and-white ground is rare, with less than 10% of the series being devoted to this particular combination. Flowers was a radical departure for the artist at the time; eschewing the shocking drama of his Death and Disaster paintings, Warhol turned to something seemingly more traditional, yet infusing the subject matter with his own radical Pop sensibility. The idea was said to have come from Henry Geldzahler, the legendary critic and curator, who told Warhol, “it’s enough of disaster; it’s time for life again” (H. Geldzahler quoted in B. Gopnik, Warhol, New York, 2020, p. 385). Using a photograph from a popular photography magazine, in his signature style Warhol subtly manipulated the image to produce one of his most celebrated and recognizable works.
The composition of Flowers is a testament to Warhol’s innovative and distinctive approach to art. By taking a pre-existing image, closely studying it’s formal qualities and re-interpreting it for the Pop age, Warhol demonstrates his thorough understanding of the language of looking. In the present work, he employes vivid hues to emphasize his subject matter, resulting in flat planes of red that are punctuated only by the delicate black anthers and stamens of the hibiscus plant. Concentrating his palette on just one color emphasizes this effect, allowing the optical resonance of the cadmium red to reverberate off the surface. Furthermore, by setting the flowers against a dark, monochromatic ground, Warhol almost pushes his subject matter through the picture plane.
With such a meticulously structured composition, Warhol also emphasizes the sense of order and seriality that became a hallmark of his oeuvre. Just like his paintings of Campbell Soup Cans and Hollywood stars such as Marilyn Monroe, the repeated motifs in Flowers draw attention to the mechanical and mass-produced nature of the printed images. Yet, there is also something different in each work, as despite the artist’s adoption of the silkscreen technique, every work in the series is different in its own right, the technique allowing for the transfer of ink onto the canvas to be distinctive each time, resulting in a discretely unique image every time.
The critical reaction to this radical departure by Warhol was immediate. The critic Peter Schjeldahl raved, “They are so goddamn beautiful. And so simple. And their glamour was so intense. What killed you, killed you, was the grainy black-and-white of the stems. That grainy look...was killer, and still is. I think it still hasn't been acknowledged that the whole critical debate should have been over at that moment. Because these Flowers paintings had all the Kantian principles that Greenberg was pushing...The Flowers resolved all [those] formal issues...but with a realistic, not an abstract, image. 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.' He 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). After seeing the Flower canvases in Warhol’s studio for the first time, Mark Lancaster—a fellow artist who visited The Factory—wrote, “Andy’s Flowers are all things bright and beautiful” (Ibid.).
With his Flowers, Warhol also engages with the established canon of still-life painting, aligning himself with the romantic renderings of flowers by painters like the Dutch Golden Age painter Rachel Ruysch, Claude Monet or Vincent van Gogh. However, Warhol transformed the age-old genre with his color-blocked blossoms, utterly removed from nature. With an aerial viewpoint, he collapses space into one flat plane—making no distinction between horizon or ground. His style is adamantly the artist’s hand, and treats his traditional subject matter with the same detachment as his commercial imagery—in this way, he distills his reputation as a creative wunderkind on the level of the master painters before him. Gerard Malanga, Warhol’s longtime assistant who worked on the Flowers series, recognized the irony of the situation: “With Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we’re doing my Flower period! Like Monet’s water lilies, Van Gogh’s Flowers, the genre” (G. Malanga quoted in D. Dalton, A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, London, 2003, p.74).
“With Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we’re doing my Flower period! Like Monet’s water lilies, Van Gogh’s Flowers, the genre.” G. Malanga
Coming from Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris and passing through Gian Enzo Sperone Gallery in Turin, Flowers then arrived to the collection of Marcello Rumma, a central figure in the Italian and international cultural debate between the 1960s and 1970s. A connoisseur and passionate collector, intellectual and friend of artists, organizing exhibitions and promoting publications dedicated to the most experimental artistic practices of his time, Marcello was a true pioneer during his brief lifetime in which he fostered a new generation of artists, by working closely with leading cultural figures such as Germano Celant and Achille Bonito Oliva.
With their intense colors and innovative compositions, Flowers exudes a sense of vibrancy and life that could only be captivated by Warhol himself. Through this series, Warhol has worked in the grand tradition of floral paintings in art history, but by adding his own interpretation on the flower motif, Warhol has created a staple composition to his oeuvre. Flowers serves as a symbol of Warhol’s ability to provoke thought and inspire conversation about the intersection of art, commerce, and culture, making Flowers an iconic and lasting symbol of the Pop Art movement, and one that will continue to bloom in the annals of art history.
Set against a monochromatic background, the four blooms in Andy Warhol’s Flowers reverberate off the surface of the canvas with an exuberant energy. This combination of all red flowers set against a black-and-white ground is rare, with less than 10% of the series being devoted to this particular combination. Flowers was a radical departure for the artist at the time; eschewing the shocking drama of his Death and Disaster paintings, Warhol turned to something seemingly more traditional, yet infusing the subject matter with his own radical Pop sensibility. The idea was said to have come from Henry Geldzahler, the legendary critic and curator, who told Warhol, “it’s enough of disaster; it’s time for life again” (H. Geldzahler quoted in B. Gopnik, Warhol, New York, 2020, p. 385). Using a photograph from a popular photography magazine, in his signature style Warhol subtly manipulated the image to produce one of his most celebrated and recognizable works.
The composition of Flowers is a testament to Warhol’s innovative and distinctive approach to art. By taking a pre-existing image, closely studying it’s formal qualities and re-interpreting it for the Pop age, Warhol demonstrates his thorough understanding of the language of looking. In the present work, he employes vivid hues to emphasize his subject matter, resulting in flat planes of red that are punctuated only by the delicate black anthers and stamens of the hibiscus plant. Concentrating his palette on just one color emphasizes this effect, allowing the optical resonance of the cadmium red to reverberate off the surface. Furthermore, by setting the flowers against a dark, monochromatic ground, Warhol almost pushes his subject matter through the picture plane.
With such a meticulously structured composition, Warhol also emphasizes the sense of order and seriality that became a hallmark of his oeuvre. Just like his paintings of Campbell Soup Cans and Hollywood stars such as Marilyn Monroe, the repeated motifs in Flowers draw attention to the mechanical and mass-produced nature of the printed images. Yet, there is also something different in each work, as despite the artist’s adoption of the silkscreen technique, every work in the series is different in its own right, the technique allowing for the transfer of ink onto the canvas to be distinctive each time, resulting in a discretely unique image every time.
The critical reaction to this radical departure by Warhol was immediate. The critic Peter Schjeldahl raved, “They are so goddamn beautiful. And so simple. And their glamour was so intense. What killed you, killed you, was the grainy black-and-white of the stems. That grainy look...was killer, and still is. I think it still hasn't been acknowledged that the whole critical debate should have been over at that moment. Because these Flowers paintings had all the Kantian principles that Greenberg was pushing...The Flowers resolved all [those] formal issues...but with a realistic, not an abstract, image. 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.' He 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). After seeing the Flower canvases in Warhol’s studio for the first time, Mark Lancaster—a fellow artist who visited The Factory—wrote, “Andy’s Flowers are all things bright and beautiful” (Ibid.).
With his Flowers, Warhol also engages with the established canon of still-life painting, aligning himself with the romantic renderings of flowers by painters like the Dutch Golden Age painter Rachel Ruysch, Claude Monet or Vincent van Gogh. However, Warhol transformed the age-old genre with his color-blocked blossoms, utterly removed from nature. With an aerial viewpoint, he collapses space into one flat plane—making no distinction between horizon or ground. His style is adamantly the artist’s hand, and treats his traditional subject matter with the same detachment as his commercial imagery—in this way, he distills his reputation as a creative wunderkind on the level of the master painters before him. Gerard Malanga, Warhol’s longtime assistant who worked on the Flowers series, recognized the irony of the situation: “With Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we’re doing my Flower period! Like Monet’s water lilies, Van Gogh’s Flowers, the genre” (G. Malanga quoted in D. Dalton, A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, London, 2003, p.74).
“With Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we’re doing my Flower period! Like Monet’s water lilies, Van Gogh’s Flowers, the genre.” G. Malanga
Coming from Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris and passing through Gian Enzo Sperone Gallery in Turin, Flowers then arrived to the collection of Marcello Rumma, a central figure in the Italian and international cultural debate between the 1960s and 1970s. A connoisseur and passionate collector, intellectual and friend of artists, organizing exhibitions and promoting publications dedicated to the most experimental artistic practices of his time, Marcello was a true pioneer during his brief lifetime in which he fostered a new generation of artists, by working closely with leading cultural figures such as Germano Celant and Achille Bonito Oliva.
With their intense colors and innovative compositions, Flowers exudes a sense of vibrancy and life that could only be captivated by Warhol himself. Through this series, Warhol has worked in the grand tradition of floral paintings in art history, but by adding his own interpretation on the flower motif, Warhol has created a staple composition to his oeuvre. Flowers serves as a symbol of Warhol’s ability to provoke thought and inspire conversation about the intersection of art, commerce, and culture, making Flowers an iconic and lasting symbol of the Pop Art movement, and one that will continue to bloom in the annals of art history.