- Jordan Crandall: If you had a car, what kind would you have?
- Andy Warhol: One with good breaks.

'I think of myself as an American artist; I like it here, I think it’s so great. It’s fantastic. I’d like to work in Europe but I wouldn’t do the same things. I’d do different things. I feel I represent the U.S. in my art but I’m not a social critic: I just paint those objects in my paintings because those are the things I know best.' (A. Warhol in K. Goldsmith, ed., I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews: 1962-1987, p.88.)

America as a theme, underlines the vast majority of Andy Warhol’s oeuvre. From Warhol’s iconic depictions of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, products like Coca-Cola and common symbols like the one dollar bill, Warhol radiated American-ness throughout his practice. Having moved into his townhouse studio at 1342 Lexington Avenuein September 1960, Warhol had officially parted with the commercial work that defined the previous decade. In a moment of irony, Pontiac was in fact one of several works commissioned by Warhol’s former client, Harper’s Bazaar for an article titled, ‘Deus Ex Machina’ for their November 1962 issue.

The spread was photographed by Eric Pollitzer in Warhol’s studio and arranged the shot in the classic studio approach: lining up the works in a casual, pastiche arrangement. Covering a four-page spread complete with captions and a passage from Be Not Afraid by Emmanuel Mounier, the magazine had commissioned Warhol, ‘to make a visual comment on the phenomenon of the American motorcar.’ (G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne: Painting and Sculpture 1961-1963, London: Phaidon, p. 193.) Even more, the caption continues as Warhol, in this early stage of his career, was ‘continuing his experimentation in ‘commonism,’ or the art of giving the familiar a supra-familiarity.’ (Ibid, 193).

This ‘commonism’ clearly predicates what is soon to become distinctly ‘Pop’. Warhol’s earliest canvases are dated to 1961 and yet display an almost immediate penchant toward commercial imagery sourced from newspapers and advertisements, which would become the basis of his work. Pontiac of 1962 is certainly no exception. Of the works completed for Harper’s Bazaar, only two (the present lot and Lincoln Continental) were painted entirely by hand. Using an opaque projector, Warhol traced the desired parts of the image onto the canvas. With a keen sense of scale, the image is strikingly frontal, painted right through to the edges of the canvas, reciprocating the 1963 model Pontiac’s graphic exterior lines. While remnants of pencil tracings can be found on the headlights and the bumper, Warhol has purposefully honed in on the most distinctive part of the Pontiac: its predominant and commanding grille.

Particularly in the 1960s, iconic cars were being produced by American companies such as Ford, Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Dodge, propagating the link between the great automobile and American culture. In the 1960s, cars became a ubiquitous form of transport, evolving from an object of luxury, afforded only to the elite. By the 1960s, the American automobile was not only a pragmatic vehicle but a symbol of freedom and the attainment of the American Dream. Warhol’s America was based upon the idea that, ‘everybody has their own America and then they have the pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.’ (Ibid, p.11) In the years to follow, Warhol returned to the symbolism of the automobile with his Death and Disaster series. The images for these silkscreens were derived from newspaper stories depicting horrific crashes and burning cars. Within this new series, begun only a few years after Pontiac, Warhol returned to the motif of the car, this time evoking a memento mori, the potential for destruction and demise belying the gloss and glamour of the American dream.