Lot Essay
In the Pop Art movement's seminal year of 1962, Andy Warhol made the revolutionary development of composing paintings of repeated imagery. Among these radical paintings made at his studio, known as the Factory, was Avanti Cars. The subject was a match for Warhol's fascination with American consumerism and its packaging, as it met his criteria for both "high" and "low" culture. The Avanti car, itself introduced in 1962, was a glamorous new state-of-the-art sports coupe that was radical in its design. Yet the car was also undeniably a mass produced American commodity that was, in fact, made of plastic. A single image of the Avanti in 1962 would have been a portrait of a new star. But repeated sixteen times, the imagery becomes a kind of mirror of consumerism, reflecting the reality of mass production. Warhol intentionally varied the tonal quality and placement of each silkscreen panel giving Avanti Cars a raw appearance, an assurance that while silkscreened, the painting was still handmade and carefully composed.