Mick Jagger (F&S II.142) by Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Mick Jagger (F&S II.142)
colour screenprint on arches aquarelle (rough) paper
signed by the artist, numbered 16/250 and signed by Mick Jagger in the lower margin; printed by Alexander Heinrici, New York; published by Seabird Editions, London, England, with their inkstamp on the reverse
43.5 x 29 in ( 110.5 x 73.7 cm ) ( sheet )
Auction Estimate: $100,000.00 - $150,000.00
Price Realized $144,000.00
Sale date: November 27th 2024
PI Fine Art, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann, "Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1987", 4th edition, Milan, 2003, catalogue no. II.142
Christopher Andersen, "Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger", New York, 2012, page 66
Stuart Lenig, "The Many Lives of Andy Warhol", London, 2021, page 91
Their friendship would not only last until Warhol’s death twenty-four years later but, most importantly, lead to the production of one of the most captivating celebrity portfolios. The series captures Mick’s sexual charisma in ten poses, all gamely playing it up for the man behind the lens. Here, Mick is shown in profile with crinkled eyes, his wide mouth open in laughter. The work focuses primarily on his joyful expression framed by unruly locks of hair curling around his forehead and ear. His slopping, naked shoulders are merely traced and shadowed, covered by shimmery fragments of silver, gold, and midnight blue Color-Aid paper. Mick appears almost godlike. With the right side of his face meticulously outlined on a glistening gold sheet, the singer’s idealized persona has been layered onto the subject’s actual features captured on a Polaroid. The effect is mesmerizing, immortalizing Mick’s outsized personality in print.
During the 1970s, Warhol regularly attended the party circuit in New York, meeting people of wealth and stature who were all too flattered to have such a famous artist in their midst. Even though he was an inveterate socialite who enjoyed gossiping and having a good time, Warhol also attended these events with a singular purpose: finding the right patrons to commission celebrity portraits. The artist would then arrange a photo session with the subject, often going through ten rolls of film while snapping informal shots. They would review the day’s work together, choosing the perfect shot, which would be sent to a photo lab to be enlarged to poster size before being delivered to Warhol’s studio. Once received, the artist would “attach it to an easel, dab it with acrylic transparent paint, often in subtle pastel colors that would retain all the elements of the original portrait with a dash of color, and finish the work. The completed standard-sized, portrait poster artwork would be framed, the work packaged and delivered to the customer with an invoice for $25,000 to $40,000.”
Through his celebrity portraits, Warhol reclaims the stars themselves, whether Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, or Liz Taylor, and replaces the star in the public’s mind. Ultimately, Warhol has preserved the aura of the Rolling Stones frontman in his series of repetitive and glamorous representations, ensuring that Mick Jagger—as both a celebrity to be worshiped and a commodity to be consumed—can live on eternally.
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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.
