Andy Warhol: ‘John Lennon’, 1986, Silkscreen, not signed and numbered, trial proof from the early prints, with blind stamp from the printer and stamp from the Publisher: Ronald Feldman, New York, 1983. Paper size 38 x 38 in/ 96,5 x 96,5 cm, very good/excellent condition, Provenance: Private Collection, New York. SOLD.
About this Artwork
John Lennon and Yoko Ono were close friends with Andy Warhol. John Lennon had asked Warhol to do an album cover for him.
Warhol and portraits – the collaboration with people of various backgrounds was the essential par of Warhol’s career. Some of these interesting personalities he welcomed in his New York studio, The Factory, and some he collaborated outside of this creative hub. One common thread remained constant throughout his career – Warhol enjoyed making portraits, especially of celebrities and famous figures, those already immortalized, which he would elevate onto another level – a level of the pop icon. The 15 minutes of fame were not just a saying, or a belief, but a motto to live by. It’s somewhat ironic how Warhol’s 15 minutes have stretched into eternity, now that we appreciate him more and more for the genius disguised by the artificially created superficiality.
About Andy Warhol
The American artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in 1928 and died in 1987. Warhol first found success as an award-winning commercial artist in New York. He soon put the commercial techniques he learned as an illustrator to work in his now-famous studio, dubbed the “Factory.” Appropriately enough, the artist once said, “I want to be a machine, ” reiterating the commercial, serial themes displayed in his paintings. Surrounding himself with a notorious coterie of assistants – from drifters and junkies to musicians and “poor little rich kids” – Warhol installed himself in his Factory, which itself quickly became New York’s most famous counter-culture nucleus. Ghostly pale and silver-wigged, Andy Warhol has become an icon himself, an impenetrable enigma who became one of the most singularly identifiable figures of the turbulent sixties. And while Warhol’s work may be best known for its stark reflections of popular and commercial culture, the artist did not hesitate to explore some of the more sinister traits of his era – from war and criminality. His grainy images of highway accidents and his serial panels of the handgun or the electric chair seem to drown emotion while at the same time recovering some of the shock power lost in the media’s trivialization of disaster. Warhol’s work has been called both naive and sophisticated, thought-provoking and mindless, superficial and profound, and the furor he created refuses to die down – more than a decade after the artist’s death.
