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Lot Essay
Well-documented and extensively exhibited, Self-Portrait is Warhol's earliest extant work. Never before on the market, the drawing provides our first glimpse of the artist's life-long obsession with appearance and its documentation. It is also a historic study of his incarnation into one of the most publicly celebrated figures in art.
According to his brother Paul Warhola, Andy was a precocious and prolific draftsman, stating that he was 'handy with a crayon by age six and displayed considerable talent at sketching by the time he was nine" (quoted in D. Bourdon, Andy Warhol, New York, 1989, p. 16). This talent was first nurtured by his mother, Julia, who supplemented the family income by creating crafts in their Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant community outside Pittsburgh. Another childhood influence was Warhol's Schenley High School art teacher, Mary Adeline McKibbin, to whom Andy gave this first self-portrait in 1942.
This period is considered a critical point in the development of the adolescent artist's personal style. Andy was just sixteen; his father had died, and he was (at least mentally) still recovering from the effects of an earlier bout of St. Vitus' Dance, which had left him bedridden for months and had caused loss of skin pigmentation that made him 'so pale that people would sometimes wonder if he was an albino' (Bourdon, p. 17). Direct and unflattering, Self-Portrait (which McKibbin called 'carefully detailed') documents the bulbous nose, pale complexion and wiry hair that Warhol would come to disguise or suppress in his future work. Disappointment with his self-image would inspire him to literally reinvent himself by shortening his name to Warhol from Warhola and, later, with cosmetic surgery to reconstruct his nose. "I'd prefer to remain a mystery. I never give away my background, and anyway, I make it up different every time I'm asked" (quoted in J. Coplans, Andy Warhol, New York, 1970, p. 8).
While in high school Warhol began attending free art classes with Joseph Fitzpatrick at the Carnegie Institute where he eventually enrolled as an undergraduate. Though the curricula were geared towards commercial rather than fine art, it was here where Warhol began to develop his signature style. The painter Philip Pearlstein, a fellow classmate recalled, "Andy did marvelous drawings...whenever he could, he would simplify it, and come up with brilliant solutions" adding about Warhol's approach, "You don't start working and making pictures before you've analyzed what the problem is...you need to see it in terms of how [the people] lived, what they lived for. And I think that's when Andy's drawings really began going" (as quoted in R. Crone, Andy Warhol: The Early Work 1942-1967, New York, 1987, p. 39).
"Apart from a long hiatus from around 1963 to 1972, Andy Warhol continued all his life in the regular practice of drawing...Andy Warhol created a coherent, consistent and prolific body of drawings in which his deepest fears and his ideals of beauty were plainly and simply outlined" (as quoted in Andy Warhol Drawings 1942-1987, Minneapolis, 1999, p. 9, 12). Self-Portrait is his historic first creation by an artist as famous for his portraiture as his Pop images.
According to his brother Paul Warhola, Andy was a precocious and prolific draftsman, stating that he was 'handy with a crayon by age six and displayed considerable talent at sketching by the time he was nine" (quoted in D. Bourdon, Andy Warhol, New York, 1989, p. 16). This talent was first nurtured by his mother, Julia, who supplemented the family income by creating crafts in their Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant community outside Pittsburgh. Another childhood influence was Warhol's Schenley High School art teacher, Mary Adeline McKibbin, to whom Andy gave this first self-portrait in 1942.
This period is considered a critical point in the development of the adolescent artist's personal style. Andy was just sixteen; his father had died, and he was (at least mentally) still recovering from the effects of an earlier bout of St. Vitus' Dance, which had left him bedridden for months and had caused loss of skin pigmentation that made him 'so pale that people would sometimes wonder if he was an albino' (Bourdon, p. 17). Direct and unflattering, Self-Portrait (which McKibbin called 'carefully detailed') documents the bulbous nose, pale complexion and wiry hair that Warhol would come to disguise or suppress in his future work. Disappointment with his self-image would inspire him to literally reinvent himself by shortening his name to Warhol from Warhola and, later, with cosmetic surgery to reconstruct his nose. "I'd prefer to remain a mystery. I never give away my background, and anyway, I make it up different every time I'm asked" (quoted in J. Coplans, Andy Warhol, New York, 1970, p. 8).
While in high school Warhol began attending free art classes with Joseph Fitzpatrick at the Carnegie Institute where he eventually enrolled as an undergraduate. Though the curricula were geared towards commercial rather than fine art, it was here where Warhol began to develop his signature style. The painter Philip Pearlstein, a fellow classmate recalled, "Andy did marvelous drawings...whenever he could, he would simplify it, and come up with brilliant solutions" adding about Warhol's approach, "You don't start working and making pictures before you've analyzed what the problem is...you need to see it in terms of how [the people] lived, what they lived for. And I think that's when Andy's drawings really began going" (as quoted in R. Crone, Andy Warhol: The Early Work 1942-1967, New York, 1987, p. 39).
"Apart from a long hiatus from around 1963 to 1972, Andy Warhol continued all his life in the regular practice of drawing...Andy Warhol created a coherent, consistent and prolific body of drawings in which his deepest fears and his ideals of beauty were plainly and simply outlined" (as quoted in Andy Warhol Drawings 1942-1987, Minneapolis, 1999, p. 9, 12). Self-Portrait is his historic first creation by an artist as famous for his portraiture as his Pop images.