Andy Warhol - Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Monday, November 11, 2013 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist
    Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Art, Part II, May 3, 1988, lot 200
    Galerie 1900-2000, Paris
    Bertrand Faure, Paris
    Perrin Royère La Jeunesse, Versailles, March 18, 1990, lot 101
    Private Collection
    Christie's, London, Contemporary Art, May 25, 1997, lot 80
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    Paris, Musée de la Poste, Les Couleurs de l'Argent, November 19, 1991–February 1, 1992

  • Literature

    Les Couleurs de l'Argent, exh. cat., Musée de la Poste, Paris, 1992, p.138 (illustrated)
    G. Frei and N. Printz, The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné Vol. 1: Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963, London: Phaidon, 2002, cat. no. 156, p. 143 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “It was one of those evenings when I’d asked around ten or fifteen people for suggestions that finally one lady friend of mine asked me the right question: ‘Well, what do you love most?’ That’s how I started painting money.”

    – Andy Warhol, 1962

    As the story goes, Warhol in conversation with Muriel Latow (interior designer and gallerist) in 1962 asked her for “fabulous ideas.” Muriel in response said it would cost him fifty dollars. Warhol wrote her a check and she replied, “Money. The thing that means more to you than anything else in the world is money. You should paint pictures of money.” (G. Frei and N. Printz, The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné Vol. 1: Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963, Phaidon, 2002, p. 131)

    Andy Warhol famously stated: “Pop comes from the outside.” By 1960, the art world had become enervated by the limitations of abstraction and a new movement had taken a firm grip on the New York art scene. The glamorization of American everyday artifacts penetrated the Pop Art movement. Warhol’s first dollar bill paintings created in 1962 were produced with hand-cut stamps; this process, however, could not accurately capture the precise lines of printed currency. The dollar bill paintings marked a turning point not only within Warhol’s own repertoire of subject matter but also in his means of artistic production. “The silk screens were really an accident,” Warhol remarked, “the first one was the money painting, but that was a silk screen of a drawing. Then someone told me you could use a photographic image, and that’s how it all started.” (T. Scherman, D.Dalton, The Genius of Andy Warhol Pop, New York, 2009, p. 109) By capitalizing on the symbolic importance of the dollar as the first subject he experiments with on silkscreen, Warhol further emphasized his unique ability to turn images of currency into currency. Throughout the 1960s, Warhol produced monumental compositions of multiple gridded dollar bills, as well as single isolated studies of one and two dollars bills. The dollar bill, the Campbell Soup cans and the Coca-Cola bottles represent Warhol’s most powerful and historically memorable images. Individually they are careful examinations of observed iconic consumerism; collectively they illuminate Warhol’s endless quest for the poignant visual representation of the American dream and his own contested relationship to the power of the dollar.

  • Artist Biography

    Andy Warhol

    American • 1928 - 1987

    Andy Warhol was the leading exponent of the Pop Art movement in the U.S. in the 1960s. Following an early career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol achieved fame with his revolutionary series of silkscreened prints and paintings of familiar objects, such as Campbell's soup tins, and celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe. Obsessed with popular culture, celebrity and advertising, Warhol created his slick, seemingly mass-produced images of everyday subject matter from his famed Factory studio in New York City. His use of mechanical methods of reproduction, notably the commercial technique of silk screening, wholly revolutionized art-making.

    Working as an artist, but also director and producer, Warhol produced a number of avant-garde films in addition to managing the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founding Interview magazine. A central figure in the New York art scene until his untimely death in 1987, Warhol was notably also a mentor to such artists as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

     

    View More Works

14

One Dollar Bill (Back)

1962
silkscreen ink on linen
8 x 12 in. (20.3 x 30.5 cm.)
Signed and dated "Andy Warhol 1962" on the reverse; further stamped by the Andy Warhol Authentication Board and numbered A123.965 on the reverse.

Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000 

Sold for $365,000

Contact Specialist
Zach Miner
Head of Evening Sale
zminer@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1256

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York 11 November 2013 7PM