Research Spotlight: Warhol's Mao

The following post comes from Amy Arnold, a curatorial intern in my department who will be graduating this summer with a BA in Art History and a BFA in painting.

                                  LIFE Magazine Cover, 3 March 1972

In preparation for an exciting exhibition opening at GMOA this August, some of my fellow interns and I have been researching the collection of prints known as the “New York Collection for Stockholm” portfolio. The portfolio was created as a fundraising initiative in 1973 to make it possible for the New York-based group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) to donate a collection of American contemporary art to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. The E.A.T. initiative focused on collaborations between artists and engineers in an effort to stimulate inventive technological growth and to explore creative applications of technology.

Of all the research we have done on the portfolio, perhaps our most exciting find concerns a print by Andy Warhol. Known for his fascination with fame, Warhol had begun using Mao imagery in his work after the Chinese dictator was referred to as the most famous person in the world in a Life magazine article from 1972. That same year, the artist began creating his Mao portraits, which were based on the leader’s official Chinese state portrait.

Before GMOA acquired its own copy of the portfolio, all that we knew about the Warhol came from the captions and labels produced by other museums that owned the print; almost no scholarship exists on it. What we generally understood was that it was an image created by Xerox copying. You can imagine our surprise when this is what we found upon opening the portfolio for the first time.

Andy Warhol, 
Mao, 1973, from the "New York Collection for Stockholm" portfolio, 
xerograph on paper,
 GMOA (accession number pending)

It resembles nothing of Mao—at least at first glance. Somewhat confused, we continued our research. As we delved deeper into the imprints in the collections of other museums, we discovered that, in fact, only a handful of the impressions actually resembled the Chinese dictator at all. The typical description of the work’s medium is “sequentially reproduced Xerox print,” meaning the prints were created by making a copy of Warhol’s original drawing of Mao, then using that copy to create another copy, and so on, degrading the clarity of the original image with each copy. We also discovered that the image was being distorted in two other ways: through enlargement and rotation. This distortion is evident in a side-by-side comparison of several editions of the Mao print.

Various editions of Andy Warhol’s Mao for the "New York Collection for Stockholm" portfolio


The edition numbers shown here are from the portfolios that were sold to the public in order to raise funds for the New York Collection at Moderna Museet. GMOA’s edition of the print is somewhat special. It comes from an edition numbered only to 31, which were reserved as publisher’s copies and were not initially for sale. For that reason, the GMOA Mao print, numbered 22/31, is even more distorted than edition 293/300, above. By collecting these images of other Mao editions, we were able to determine that GMOA’s print is a close-up and rotated view of Mao’s upper lip, just under his right nostril.  

The exhibition, The New York Collection for Stockholm, will be on view at GMOA from August 18–November 3, 2012. In addition to Andy Warhol, the show also features Walter de Maria, Jim Dine, Mark di Suvero, Dan Flavin, Red Grooms, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol Lewitt, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly, to name a few.

Qatar: The dark horse of contemporary art

What country do you think is the biggest buyer in the contemporary art market? The United States? England? Perhaps even France? You could continue this guessing game for more than an hour and we are certain you would not have come up with the correct answer: Qatar. The small oil-rich country of Qatar is located in the Middle East and has a population hovering around 1.5 million, thus proving, without a doubt, that you don’t have to be big to be important. Over the past six years it is believed that Qatar has been behind most major sales and commissions of modern art. Just recently, Edward Dolman, the chair of Christie’s auction house of New York, was announced as an executive director in the office of the Sheikh. Dolman will join the board of trustees of the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA), who oversee many of the cultural initiatives of the country. Dolman stated, “Qatar is looking to deliver a series of exciting cultural projects in time for the World Cup in 2022.” The list of purchases and planned exhibitions to take place in Qatar is astounding. The country is planning a Jeff Koons exhibition and recently was part of a $310 million deal involving the purchase of 11 Rothkos. Other major acquisitions include works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Damien Hirst and William Hoare—quite the major accomplishment for a state that only technically became an independent country in the fall of 1971.

"Andy Warhol: The Last Decade"

Andy Warhol often evokes visions of colorful images, including soup cans, celebrities and other pop culture icons. People usually do not think about the last works done by the king of pop [art]. After 1968, a noticeable change in subject matter and methodology took place in his work. An assassination attempt would understandably leave one questioning beliefs, including one’s validity as an artist. These changes include a return to painting and darker imagery. An exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum focuses on his prolific later creations.

“Andy Warhol: The Last Decade” begins with a piece from 1978 and includes work up until his untimely death at age 58 in 1987. The work ranges from pop art mixed with abstracted splatters to Oxidation Paintings. He worked with admired artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente, which lead him to use canvas, a material he had not used in years. Some of the pieces have darker connotations. According to a New York Times article, “the titles themselves speak volumes: The American Indian, Athletes, Torsos, Portraits of the Jews of the 20th Century, Dollar Signs, Knives, Guns, [and] Myths.” The constant fear of death was apparent in his piece “Self-Portrait (Strangulation).” A collection of 10 small canvases features him looking upward while being strangled by an unknown hand. This mirrors his previous self-portraits, with the photographic image over large color blocks, however contains a darker twist than his typical surprised expression.

His oxidation paintings are surprisingly beautiful, with golds and greens that radiate from the black linen. The Abstract Expressionist-like paintings are made with “ethereal loops of one pale color drifting across clouds of others, [and] suggest languid wrist action, even though it is hard to figure out exactly what is printed and what is painted.” His largest work, a collection of canvases totaling 32 feet, takes cues from da Vinci’s The Last Supper. It mixes motorcycles and religion into one erotic piece.

Joseph D. Ketner II, the show curator, wrote an essay explaining the show:

“It retraces the evolution of the paintings on view and the increasingly close collaborative methods of Warhol and his studio assistants. It also provides a vivid sense of Warhol’s relatively vulnerable frame of mind, his yearning for approbation and his encounters with old master painting, which helped revive his own interest in painting.” (http://nyti.ms/9xv9bi)

If you visit the New York/Brooklyn area before September 12, be sure to check out the exhibition, which contains the best of approximately 3,500 works from Warhol’s last ten years. For more information on museum location and hours, please go to http://bit.ly/davApp.

If you are interested in seeing Warhol’s work locally, GMOA owns a selection of screen prints from Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Portfolio I series as well as a number of the artist’s photographs. At least one of his works will be on view permanently when the museum reopens in January 2011.