The Shadow by Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
The Shadow
screenprint on lenox museum board
signed and numbered 9/200 in pencil lower right; stamped “Copyright Andy Warhol 1981, Publisher Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc., New York” on the reverse; Printed by Rupert Jasen Smith, New York
38 x 38 ins ( 96.5 x 96.5 cms )
Auction Estimate: $25,000.00 - $35,000.00
Price Realized $18,530.00
Sale date: September 24th 2015
Martin Lawrence Galleries, San Francisco
Private Collection, New Brunswick
“Warhol Shadows, catalogue of The Menil Collection held at Richmond Hall”, Houston, Texas, 1987
“Andy Warhol Prints, Expanded Edition”, Fraya Feldman and Jorg Schellmann, New York, 1985, page 19
“Andy Warhol Prints, A Catalogue Raisonne 1962-1987”, Fraya Feldman and Claudia Defendi, New York, 2003, pages 31, 122 & 123 (illustrated in colour)
“The Andy Warhol Diaries”, edited by Pat Hackett, New York, 1989
“Andy Warhol: The Late Work”, edited by Mark Francis, concept Mattjis Visser, New York, 2004
“The Shadow” was officially part of a 1981 series called “Myths,” which included images of well known characters such as Dracula, Mickey Mouse, Superman, and Santa Claus. Warhol's self-portrait was the most obvious suggestion of irony in the series. By using imaginary childhood characters, Warhol used nostalgia to shed light on society's “naive believe in heroes and demons” by raising “crucial questions about the role of the media in shaping cultural values.” “The Shadow” features Warhol's signature Diamond Dust; fine particles of cut of crushed glass, which were applied to the print when wet to give the artwork a sparkling appearance.
By the time Warhol produced the “Myths” series, he was touring extensively, which meant he had less time to devote to creating new artwork. As a result, work of art from this period are comparatively rare. The year “The Shadow” was created, Warhol visited Toronto where he saw the Art Gallery of Ontario's “Gauguin to Moore” exhibit. He wrote in his diary about the experience, his awe for Moore's work, and, as ever, his concerns about his personal appearance. That evening he attended a lavish party in Toronto, but Warhol refused to drink because he worried about his weight gain, from 115 lbs to 119.
Warhol's notorious concern over his image may have motivated his interest in portraiture and self-portraits. He made portraits of famous contemporaries, including the first portrait of artist Joseph Beuys in 1980, and Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982. Possibly his best known self-portrait series, simply titled “Self Portraits,” was made between 1985 and 1986. “The Shadow” is connected to an important part of Warhol's self-exploration and overall artistic practice; a part of a continual thought process.
Another of Warhol's series that helps us understand “Myths” and “The Shadow,” was completed only a few years prior and was similarly titled “Shadows.” It included 102 paintings, 83 of which were exhibited for the opening of the Menil Collection at Richmond Hall in New York. Warhol described it as “one painting with 83 parts,” emphasizing the connectedness of his paintings within his oeuvre. While “The Shadow” is not direct part of the “Shadows” series, there are aspects of each that suggest Warhol made repeated attempts to visually display abstract concepts about mass media, reflection and nostalgia.
In 1982, Warhol created a will, and in 1987 he died suddenly in his sleep from a post-operative cardiac arrhythmia after a routine gall bladder surgery. He was only 59 years old.
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Andy Warhol
(1928 - 1987)
Fascinated by consumer culture, fame, and the media, Andy Warhol established himself as one of the most famous and influential artists of the twentieth century. Born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to working-class immigrants from present-day Slovakia, Warhol grew up with an enduring interest in celebrities and mass culture. He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology before moving to New York City to become a successful commercial artist and illustrator. During the 1950s, his drawings were published in magazines and displayed in department stores. Yet, Warhol was developing his own style of painting at the same time, inspired by mass culture.
By the early 1960s, Warhol began producing paintings of banal consumer goods, such as soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles, and movie stars, thus establishing his status as the founder of Pop art. He deliberately blurred the lines between high and low art, celebrating popular culture and consumerism unlike ever before. Warhol embraced the photomechanical silkscreen process in 1962 by producing paintings through photography, thus rejecting traditional notions of the handmade and authorship from his works. The fact that his studio was called “The Factory” only reinforced this image. By 1963, he had replaced his silkscreen process for hand painting. Working with assistants, he produced series of flowers, cows, and portraits of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Queen Elizabeth II, Liz Taylor and Mick Jagger, among many others. In the early 1970s, he returned to painting after concentrating briefly on making films, producing monumental silkscreen images of Mao Zedong, commissioned portraits and the Hammer and Sickle series. A major retrospective of his work, organized by the Pasadena Art Museum in 1970, travelled across the United States and abroad. Warhol died in 1987 at the age of fifty-eight in New York.
