Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buy… Read more PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN COLLECTION
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

Gold Jackie

Details
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Gold Jackie
signed 'Andy Warhol 1964' (on the overlap)
gold synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen inks on canvas
20 x 16in. (50.8 x 40.7cm.)
Executed in 1964
Provenance
OK Harris, New York.
Irving Blum, New York.
Ileana Sonnabend, New York.
Galleria Gian Enzo Esperone, Turin.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's London, 27 June 2001, lot 15.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
Literature
G. Frei and N. Prinz, The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonn/ae, Paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, vol 02A, London 2002, p. 202, no. 1131 (illustrated in colour p. 197).
Special notice
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

The world was shaken when, on 22 November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Texas. Images of the widowed Jackie in Texas, and later at the cemetery in Arlington for the funeral, spread throughout the media. It was therefore only natural that Andy Warhol, the vulture of popular culture, should use them in what would become one of his most famous and iconic series of pictures. In Gold Jackie, executed in 1964, Warhol has selected one of the most poignant of these images, a close-up of the bereaved, beautiful First Lady. Where in his Marilyns he had shown the dead star in the bloom of life, here he shows someone alive who has been clearly torn by death.

Warhol himself said that he 'realized that everything I was doing must have been Death... But when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have any effect' (Warhol, quoted in Andy Warhol Death and Disasters, exh. cat., Houston 1988, p. 19). The fact that this image, and others like it, were so endemic dulled the sting of death for the public. Each sensational headline, every shocking and dramatic headline and front cover photo of death and disaster, was helping to numb readers and viewers, a process that has culminated in the present day world of 24 hour television coverage of conflicts in far flung lands. To an extent, then, the shining Gold Jackie is a ritzy, stylish image that reduces death to the status of decoration, echoing the increasing ambivalence of the modern world to such matters. However, by focusing on the poignant, engaging features of Jackie Kennedy in this picture and presenting it her against a gold background that recalls old religious paintings, Warhol has created an absorbing and thought-provoking pietà for the modern world.

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