Beschreibung:

Andy Warhol Guns 1981 synthetic polymer, silkscreen ink on canvas 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.) Stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. on the reverse and numbered 'PA15.036' on the overlap.
Provenance The Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York Acquired directly from the above by the present owner Catalogue Essay Andy Warhol’s silkscreen paintings remain some of the most iconic images of the twentieth century, simultaneously celebrating and exposing consumer culture. Arguably one of the most influential artists to emerge from post-war America, Warhol was a master at carefully curating his public persona, he infamously quipped that ‘everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.’ Although hungry for fame and public approval, the artist remained intensely private, masterfully evading exposure of his innermost private life. His signature silkscreen technique, coupled with his ‘Factory’ model of production, effectively eliminated any trace of the artist’s hand—echoing the dichotomy of both the artist and his work. Although Warhol’s paintings are immediately relatable, the imagery was often deeply personal. Throughout his life Warhol was known to be a consummate hypochondriac, obsessed with mortality. The artist’s earlier Disaster series from the 1960s, in which he reproduced images of riots, car crashes and suicides, often juxtaposing them with bright colours, embodied this morbid fascination with death. This series depicts the grisly aftermath of human tragedy through the unsentimental lens of the news camera, translating it to canvas through the Factory silkscreen. The Disaster works also included celebrity paintings of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, illustrating the paradox between public and private loss. The resulting images simulate the loss of self at the hands of constant public scrutiny and celebrity obsession. Each woman, each race riot, each disaster—all are treated as commonplace commodities, like the Campbell’s soup can or the Coca-Cola bottle. Although the turbulent nature of the Sixties was the genesis for Warhol’s Disaster series, the present lot is part of a later series born from true personal trauma. During the 1960s, Warhol was a relative outsider to the violence he painted so often in the Disaster series. According to Ondine, a frequent Factory actor, ‘every time I saw him witness real violence he was completely surprised. He didn't expect violence on other people’s parts and violence shocked him. He wasn't aware of it. He didn't have street smarts.’ (Ondine, quoted in V. Bockris, The Life and Death of Andy Warhol London, 1989, p. 201). If witnessing violence through the protected window of the television screen was shocking for Warhol, facing violence first hand was a different thing entirely. Guns, part of the artist’s later Guns and Knives series, is an intimate glimpse into the mind of the artist after a near-death encounter almost ten years prior (1968), in which marginal Factory figure Valerie Solanas attempted an assassination on the artist’s life. Solanas was an occasional actress in Factory films and authored the radical feminist S.C.U.M. (The Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto, which urged women to ‘overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex’ (Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto, 1967, p. 1). Like Marilyn and Jackie, Warhol had achieved celebrity status, making him a target for radicals like Solanas. The resulting gunshot left the artist permanently disfigured—the bullet from the gun had entered the left side of his torso and ricocheted through his abdomen, creating a grotesque patchwork of scarring across the artist’s chest. Although Warhol would never have publicly revealed the truly intimate nature of the work—when asked what he thought about guns, he answered: ‘Yes, I think they’re really kind of nice’ (Andy Warhol in Andy Warhol Giant Size, London 2006, p. 548)—this work acted as a cathartic exercise for the artist. Physically and psychologically wounded, Warhol bravely followed in the art-historical tradition of memento mori, which reflects on the fleetingness of human