ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) Self-Portrait, 1986 synthetic polymer and silkscreen inks on canvas 55.8x55.8cm Estimate :£300,000-400,000

Warhol's choice of Chairman Mao as a portrait subject in the early 1970a has been widely acclaimed as a stroke of genius. Incorporating the iconic figure of the Chinese leader into the lexicon of Pop Art was a dramatic act of appropriation that seemed to assert that even hardcore Communict ideology could be seen as a mere commodity of the Capitalist world.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Two Maos, synthetic polymer and silkscreen inks on canvas,(I) 30.5x25.5cm,(II) 30.8x25.1cm. Executed in 1973. Estimate :£250,000-350,000

POST-WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART

Andy Warhol’s 1964 Self Portrait had its genesis in a simple, unembellished snapshot taken at a Time square four-for-a-quater photo-booth. Many of his early portraits share this origin, including his famous Ethel Scull 36 Times, and it is in the Scull Collection that Self-Potrait found its first home. Warhol loved the Pop aesthetic of the photo-booth picture and that there was no artist’s hand present in the making the image owed its existence to mechanical process distanced him from his subject, a reluctance concerning intimacy that he even practiced with himself. The unstudied spontaneity of the image was particularly appealing too-Warhol enjoyed the ease with which an icon could be made. When he liked a photograph he often had it processed into a twenty-by-sixteen-inch silkscreen.
Self-Portrait is an arresting work : two clear, crisp screenprints on canvas placed side by side by the artist. The eyes are coloured to correspond to the backgrounds, and they bear reference to the Mona Lisa-it is easy to imagine both pairs of eyes ‘following’ the viewer around the room. In both, his hair is silver and his skin is pink, echoing his unusual look in real life. The artist is seen looking as flat and two-dimension as possible. Mimicking the serial nature of his own Champbell soup cans, Brillo boxes and Coca-Cola bottles (and even Jasper John’s Painted Bronze, consisting of Ballantine Ale cans side-by-side), Warhol sought to render himself without uniqueness and character, as if to say even his own image could be a Pop subject-matter in perfect repetition. Self-Portrait is a testament to Warhol’s love of repetition and in particular the leitmotiv of pairing. In many double-image works such as Elvis, Liz, Jackie and Liza, pairing emphasizes a basic Pop tenet-if a single images is perceived to be unique, the two side-by-side, appearing identical must surely be mass-produced. No other examples of this portrait exist as a pair or in any other multiple configurations, highlighting the importance of this works to Warhol’s ideas of seriality and the duality of singularity and sameness.
Of all of Warhol’s self-portraits-and there are at least then different Andy that stand out through the artist’s thirty some years of production- this one is remarkable as it is the least performative in nature. No glasses, no trenchcoat, no hand over the mouth in sissy thoughtfulness, no fright wig. Just Andy as a young man looking as he might on a drivers’s license. Twice. With piercing red and blue eyes.