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Screen print on Beckett High white paper. From the Cowboys And Indians Portfolio. Hand signed and numbered on verso by Andy Warhol. Artist Proof edition AP 23/50 (outside the main edition of 250). Published by Castelli Graphics and Multiples, Inc., New York. Printed by Styria Studio, Inc., New York. Feldman & Schellmann II.96.
The artwork is in excellent condition. All reasonable offers will be considered.
Andy Warhol’s Mao portfolio appropriates the official portrait of Mao Zedong, the former Chairman of the Communist Party of China. Warhol was inspired by the portrait’s similarity to silkscreen and its ubiquity—Mao’s portrait was known to every Chinese person and could be seen throughout China in both public and private spaces. The Mao portfolio, made up of ten different versions of Mao’s portrait, evokes the propagandistic use of the image in China. Interestingly, Warhol treats Mao’s image in the same manner that he treats his portraits of Western celebrities. Mao’s cult of personality mirrored the cult-like followings of Western celebrities, and Warhol’s decision to treat Mao’s portrait in the same manner as icons such as Marilyn Monroe frames the Chinese leader as a pop icon. Warhol exposes the similarity between Western and Eastern adoration of individuals and the mass dissemination of their images, and his use of outrageous coloring examines fame in its multiple forms.
About the Artist: Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987) was a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. Like his contemporaries Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg, Warhol responded to mass-media culture of the 1960s. His silkscreens of cultural and consumer icons—including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Campbell’s Soup Cans, and Brillo Boxes—would make him one of the most famous artists of his generation. “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do,” he once explained. Born Andrew Warhola on August 6, 1928 in Pittsburgh, PA, he graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949. Moving to New York to pursue a career in commercial illustration, the young artist worked for magazines such as Vogue and Glamour. Though Warhol was a gay man, he kept much of his private life a secret, occasionally referencing his sexuality through art. This is perhaps most evident in his drawings of male nudes from the 1950s, and later in his film Sleep (1963), which portrays the poet John Giorno nude. In 1964, Warhol rented a studio loft on East 47th street in Midtown Manhattan which was later known as The Factory. The artist used The Factory as a hub for movie stars, models, and artists, who became fodder for his prints and films. The space also functioned as a performance venue for The Velvet Underground. During the 1980s, Warhol collaborated with several younger artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring. The artist died tragically following complications from routine gall bladder surgery at the age of 58, on February 22, 1987 in New York, NY. After his death, the artist’s estate became The Andy Warhol Foundation and in 1994, a museum dedicated to the artist and his oeuvre opened in his native Pittsburgh. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others. A major retrospective of Warhol’s work took place at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York in 2019.
