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Lot Essay
Once owned by Roy Lichtenstein and later donated to the Guggengheim Museum, this multicolour version from Andy Warhol's 'Flower' series is rare in that it depicts each of the four silkscreen flowers in a different and a deliberately lurid and artificial-looking pastel shade of colour.
Warhol derived his flowers from a colour photograph of hibiscus blossoms that were printed as a two-page fold-out in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography that was used to illustrate an article on a Kodak colour processor designed for amateurs. Warhol cropped the original image and by repositioning one of the flowers through 180 degrees, formed the four flowers into a square format. "I like painting on a square", he said, "because you don't have to decide whether it should be longer-longer or shorter-shorter or longer-shorter: it's just a square." (cited in Warhol David Bourdon, New York 1989, p. 191.)
The flatening of the flowers through the addition of Warhol's cosmetic colouring makes them float in an unspecified space and appear as David Bourdon described them in a review of the Castelli show, "like cut-out gouaches by Matisse set adrift on Monet's lily pond".(ibid, p. 191) This ambiguity as to whether the view is an aerial or elevated one allied to the square format of the paintings means that the pictures have no conventional top or bottom and this enables them, as Warhol himself encouraged, to be hung "any side up".
Warhol derived his flowers from a colour photograph of hibiscus blossoms that were printed as a two-page fold-out in the June 1964 issue of Modern Photography that was used to illustrate an article on a Kodak colour processor designed for amateurs. Warhol cropped the original image and by repositioning one of the flowers through 180 degrees, formed the four flowers into a square format. "I like painting on a square", he said, "because you don't have to decide whether it should be longer-longer or shorter-shorter or longer-shorter: it's just a square." (cited in Warhol David Bourdon, New York 1989, p. 191.)
The flatening of the flowers through the addition of Warhol's cosmetic colouring makes them float in an unspecified space and appear as David Bourdon described them in a review of the Castelli show, "like cut-out gouaches by Matisse set adrift on Monet's lily pond".(ibid, p. 191) This ambiguity as to whether the view is an aerial or elevated one allied to the square format of the paintings means that the pictures have no conventional top or bottom and this enables them, as Warhol himself encouraged, to be hung "any side up".