Portrait of Prince Charles

Andy Warhol's uncanny ability to select and present through his work images that have become icons of their era has long been noted. From his Campbell's Soup Cans and Brillo Boxes of the 1960s to his Dollar Signs of the monetary 1980s, Warhol always managed to choose and portray media-based images that capture much of the prevailing mood or Zeitgeist of their time. This remarkable quality of his work is nowhere more apparent than in his portraiture. From his first portraits of Marilyn Monroe to those of Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Elvis and Marlon Brando in the 1960s or Chairman Mao in the 1970s, Warhol presented a series of personalities who had or would become not only 'stars' but also important cultural icons of their time. In all these cases Warhol chose a specific image of each of these famous personages that encapsulated the magnetism of the individual and the unique 'star quality' that they emanated. Many of Warhol's images have consequently grown more poignant with time as hindsight of these star's fading glory or later dramatic and often tragic events has come to scar our mental image and our memories, while their portraits remain inviolate altarpieces to what they once were and what they once represented. Of course, Warhol's portraits of Marilyn, Liz Taylor and Jackie were intended to be poignant at the time they were made; an unconscious prelude, Warhol once commented, to his Death and Disasters series. But many other of Warhol's portraits - those of Elvis, John Lennon, and Lenin for example - have been radically transformed by subsequent events into icons of a period that is now gone forever. The same can now be said for his portraits of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Executed in 1982 - one year after the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer, Warhol evidently saw that the young royal couple represented a glamorous transformation of the British Royal Family and was quick to include them in his pantheon of stars by painting their portraits. The images he chose were the somewhat formal portrait photographs of the Prince and Princess issued around the time of the wedding. Applying his customary silk-screen process to the photographic image, the resultant series of pictures emphasizes, with its vivid colouring, the glamour and modernity of the couple whilst at the same time, their formal pose stresses their royal status.

At the time, the marriage of Charles to Diana represented a widely-held and youthful optimism for the future. As the future King and Queen of the United Kingdom, the new Prince and Princess of Wales represented continuity with tradition but also forward-looking modernity. Subsequent events such as Diana's elevation to media superstar, the couple's highly publicised divorce and the tragic early death of the Princess have meant that these portraits now seem representative of a time of innocent and perhaps naïve optimism.