Mao

Warhol made a rare turn toward politics during 1971, the year China opened its doors to the United States. "The United States press was filled with stories about the new climate of friendliness in the communist regime and the plans for President Nixon's historic visit to China the following year. 'I've been reading so much about China,' Warhol said in September. 'They're so nutty. They don't believe in creativity. The only picture they ever have is of Mao Zedong. It's great. It looks like a silkscreen.' Mao's appeal for Warhol was partly due to the simple fact that his face--displayed in storefronts and on street corners throughout China--was one of the most recognisable faces in the world. But Warhol also relished the fact that, for many Americans, Mao's face symbolized an alien and threatening form of government, which he accurately and perversely predicted would make his portrait more appealing to capitalist collectors in the West. Soon, Warhol was repeating Mao's plump face on canvases, in pencil drawings, in silkscreen prints, and on wallpaper. Andy Warhol based his portraits of Mao on an official photograph of the communist leader. Unlike most of his earlier portraits, he decided to render these in a more painterly style, freely brushing a somewhat expressionist background of colors before silkscreening the image." (D. Bourdon, Andy Warhol, New York, 1989, pp. 317-318.)


Fig. 1 Warhol at Tienman Square, Beijing, 1982, photograph by Christopher Makos