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Lot Essay
Andy Warhol’s portrait of the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong is one of the artist’s most effecting treatises on the power of the image. When the present work was painted in 1973, its subject was the leader of the world’s most populous nation, a country closing in on one billion people. As the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Mao’s official portrait would have been everywhere. Together with Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Elvis, Mao entered Warhol’s pantheon of people whom he committed to canvas and became one of his most inspired. As legendary curator Kynaston McShine noted, “if Warhol can be regarded as an artist of strategy, his choice of Mao as a subject—as the ultimate star—was brilliant. The image of Mao… is probably the one recognized by more of the earth’s population than any other—a ready-made icon representing absolute political and cultural power. In Warhol’s hands, this image could be considered ominously and universally threatening, or a parody or both” (Andy Warhol Retrospective, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1989, p. 19).
Warhol’s Mao canvases marked a return to painting for an artist who had spent much of the previous few years concentrating on his film projects. It is perhaps fitting then that these portraits are among the most painterly of his career. Rendering his subject’s features in bold, black silkscreen inks, Warhol also lavished the painting with a series of energetic brushstrokes which are especially evident in the broad, loose, gestural marks beneath the screened image. Mao’s face is rendered in bold yellow orange azo and indo orange red pigments, complemented by permanent deep green jacket. Coupled with the silkscreen of Mao, these subjective interjections of energetic expression add a touch of subversion towards a collective regime that proscribed individual artistic creativity. The present work is one of only four of the 1973 paintings in which the orientation of the face has been reversed when compared with those that make up the rest of the series (two of these are in the collection of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh). It was acquired directly from the artist’s estate and has remained in the present owner’s collection for over twenty-five years.
Having already immortalized Hollywood celebrities, Warhol’s decision to depict a political leader might have seemed an unusual one. In fact, the idea for these works appears to have come from the gallery owner Bruno Bischofberger. As Warhol’s friend Bob Colacello recalled, “it began with an idea from Bruno…, who had been pushing Andy to get back to painting, as had Fred [Hughes]. Bruno’s idea was that Andy should paint the most important figure of the twentieth century.” The first name that came up was Albert Einstein who, in Colacello’s words, “was responsible for both the technological richness and technological terror of life in this century.” Andy had a different idea, “I was just reading in Life magazine that the most famous person in the world was Chairman Mao. Shouldn’t it be the most famous person, Bruno?” (quoted in N. Printz, ed., op. cit., 2010, p. 165).
While Warhol was initially captivated by the idea of reproducing an image that had become pervasive, his choice of the Communist leader ran in parallel with the artist’s own investigations into the power of images in modern culture. Ironically, both Mao and Warhol understood the power that an image could have and, just like the Chinese leader, Warhol’s rendition of an authoritarian ruler was anchored in the media’s power to create, canonize and commodify personas for collective absorption. While Warhol’s earlier logo-like representation of movie stars and consumer products such as Coca-Cola bottles and Campbell’s Soup cans reflected the ethos of American capitalism and the publicity machinations that underpinned it, Warhol’s Mao reveals the centrally controlled propaganda apparatus of Chinese communism. Mao’s physiognomy was propagated via billboards, posters and pamphlets throughout China; indeed, Warhol derived the silk-screen image for Mao from an official state portrait in the Little Red Book (officially titled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung), the widely circulated collection of the leader’s ideology.
Warhol’s Mao canvases marked a return to painting for an artist who had spent much of the previous few years concentrating on his film projects. It is perhaps fitting then that these portraits are among the most painterly of his career. Rendering his subject’s features in bold, black silkscreen inks, Warhol also lavished the painting with a series of energetic brushstrokes which are especially evident in the broad, loose, gestural marks beneath the screened image. Mao’s face is rendered in bold yellow orange azo and indo orange red pigments, complemented by permanent deep green jacket. Coupled with the silkscreen of Mao, these subjective interjections of energetic expression add a touch of subversion towards a collective regime that proscribed individual artistic creativity. The present work is one of only four of the 1973 paintings in which the orientation of the face has been reversed when compared with those that make up the rest of the series (two of these are in the collection of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh). It was acquired directly from the artist’s estate and has remained in the present owner’s collection for over twenty-five years.
Having already immortalized Hollywood celebrities, Warhol’s decision to depict a political leader might have seemed an unusual one. In fact, the idea for these works appears to have come from the gallery owner Bruno Bischofberger. As Warhol’s friend Bob Colacello recalled, “it began with an idea from Bruno…, who had been pushing Andy to get back to painting, as had Fred [Hughes]. Bruno’s idea was that Andy should paint the most important figure of the twentieth century.” The first name that came up was Albert Einstein who, in Colacello’s words, “was responsible for both the technological richness and technological terror of life in this century.” Andy had a different idea, “I was just reading in Life magazine that the most famous person in the world was Chairman Mao. Shouldn’t it be the most famous person, Bruno?” (quoted in N. Printz, ed., op. cit., 2010, p. 165).
While Warhol was initially captivated by the idea of reproducing an image that had become pervasive, his choice of the Communist leader ran in parallel with the artist’s own investigations into the power of images in modern culture. Ironically, both Mao and Warhol understood the power that an image could have and, just like the Chinese leader, Warhol’s rendition of an authoritarian ruler was anchored in the media’s power to create, canonize and commodify personas for collective absorption. While Warhol’s earlier logo-like representation of movie stars and consumer products such as Coca-Cola bottles and Campbell’s Soup cans reflected the ethos of American capitalism and the publicity machinations that underpinned it, Warhol’s Mao reveals the centrally controlled propaganda apparatus of Chinese communism. Mao’s physiognomy was propagated via billboards, posters and pamphlets throughout China; indeed, Warhol derived the silk-screen image for Mao from an official state portrait in the Little Red Book (officially titled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung), the widely circulated collection of the leader’s ideology.