Beschreibung:

Andy Warhol Untitled (Imperial Car Detail) 1962 graphite on paper 45.7 x 61 cm (18 x 24 in.)
Provenance Estate of Andy Warhol Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York Gagosian Gallery, New York Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1998) Exhibited New York, Gagosian Gallery, Andy Warhol Drawings and Related Works 1951-1986, 13 February-22 March 2003 Los Angeles, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Andy Warhol Retrospective, 25 May-18 August 2002 then traveled to Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie; London, Tate Modern New York, Christophe Van de Weghe Fine Art, Andy Warhol Works on Paper from the early 60's, 10 November-16 December 2000 Literature Andy Warhol Works on paper from the early 60’s, exh. cat., Christophe van de Weghe Fine Art, New York, 2000, cat. no. 15 (illustrated) Andy Warhol Drawings and Related Works 1951-1986, Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2003, p. 87 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay The car is a recurrent subject in Andy Warhol’s oeuvre. As Renate Wiehager writes, it functions as a ‘marque and a prophetic warning, as a symbol of economic prosperity and individual freedom, a fulfilment and undoing.’ (Renate Wiehager, Andy Warhol Cars and Business Art, Stuttgart: DaimlerChrysler AG, 2002, p.7). From the ruination of Burning White Car III to the elegance of Mercedes Benz 300 SL Coupe, 1954, it recurs as a startling and ambiguous vision of modernity. In the present lot, the car takes a graceful form: an embodiment of quiet majesty. Dating from 1962, Untitled (Car Detail) finds Warhol at a stylistic intersection. For much of the previous decade he had worked as an advertising illustrator. Using a ‘blotted line’ technique that involved a painstaking process of ink transferral, he created a series of images distinguished by tremulous lines amid open space. Untitled (Imperial Car Detail) derives a compositional influence from these pieces; Warhol leaves much of the upper portion blank, effectively imaging the smooth surface of the vehicle. Elsewhere in the drawing, he takes a less minimal approach. Depicting the headlight he makes deft use of charcoal to create depth and texture that is largely absent from previous works. In 1963, Warhol defined Pop Art as ‘liking things.’ (Andy Warhol in conversation with Gene Swenson, Art News, 1963). As is often the case with Warhol, blunt phrasing reveals complex thought. Implicitly responding to the non-representational work of the Abstract Expressionists, he challenges the hegemony of subjectivity and the artist’s mark. Instead, he proposes a radical affirmation of external reality as a legitimate subject. Questions of individual artistry, he implies, might be less important than the depicted object. In part Untitled (Imperial Car Detail) is an expression of this sensibility; an avowal of surface, it is concerned with image rather than artist. It resonates with many of Warhol’s prints from the period; in pieces like 191 One Dollar Bills and 210 Coca-Cola Bottles, he reproduced familiar images from consumer culture rather than individualised marks. This disavowal of subjectivity found extreme expression in a desire for obscured authorship; ‘it would be so great if more people took up silk screens so that no one would know whether my picture was mine or somebody else’s’ (Andy Warhol in conversation with Gene Swenson, Art News, 1963). In his printmaking, Warhol harnessed near-industrial strategies of replication to remain at a distance from his work. As Heiner Bastian writes, this proved the ‘ideal medium to depersonalise production: the print reflects the actual commensurability of the sheer facticity of the depicted object.’ (Heiner Bastian, ‘Rituals of Unfulfillable Individuality – The Whereabouts of Emotion’, in Andy Warhol Retrospective, London: Tate, 2002, p.27). Drawing in graphite is rather more intimate. In the gently wavering lines and gestural shading at the bottom of Untitled (Imperial Car Detail) we encounter the signs of artistic process. In his prints, Warhol’s hand is elided; individuation occurs but within a mechanistic fram