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 framework, and often amidst serial repetition. However, in the present lot, we are privy to the unmistakable trace of an artist moving graphite across paper.
In focusing on a fragment of an object, the work is rather more typical. Warhol’s oeuvre is full of isolated parts; often human and animal forms are bisected, but on a number of occasions he directs his gaze to vehicular forms. Composed of casein and pencil on canvas, Pontiac (1961) is the most striking compositional antecedent to the lot at hand. Depicting the front of the car, it closes in on a section of the vehicle, cutting it roughly in half. The silk screen print Twelve Cadillacs dates from the same year as Untitled (Imperial Car Detail). A 3x4 grid apportions a dozen nearly-identical sections of the titular vehicle, accentuating the gleaming bonnet. In each instance, Warhol draws attention to the form rather than the function of the subject. Dividing the car for the purpose of the image, he treats it as a largely aesthetic phenomenon. Again, attention is directed to surface.
Given how central mass production and consumer aesthetics are to Warhol’s work, the car is an ideal subject. However, in Untitled (Imperial Car Detail), Warhol creates an unexpected and densely layered piece. As in much of his work, he invites the viewer to luxuriate in exteriors; sketching out the logo and insignia, his interest seems to lie in the particularity of the object’s appearance and in its status in consumer culture. But in its sketched lines and human fluidity, he positions it outside the mechanised processes that characterise much of his work. His distinctive cool is brought into tension with a rather less distanced aesthetic practice.
