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Property from a Distinguished German Private Collector
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Double Mona Lisa
Details
ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987)
Double Mona Lisa
signed and dated ‘Andy Warhol 1963’ (on the overlap)
silkscreen ink on canvas
30 x 33 7/8 in. (76.2 x 86 cm.)
Executed in 1963.
Double Mona Lisa
signed and dated ‘Andy Warhol 1963’ (on the overlap)
silkscreen ink on canvas
30 x 33 7/8 in. (76.2 x 86 cm.)
Executed in 1963.
Provenance
Thilo von Watzdorf, London and New York, acquired directly from the artist
The Greenberg Gallery, St. Louis, 1985
Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 1990
The Greenberg Gallery, St. Louis, 1985
Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 1990
Literature
P. M. Pickshaus, “Die Teilnahmslosigkeit als Gegenwart der Sinne zur Aktualität Warhols,“ Kunst Nachrichten, vol. 18, no. 5, September 1982, p. 118 (illustrated).
G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculpture 1961–1963, Volume I, London, 2002, pp. 299-300, no. 333 (illustrated).
G. Frei and N. Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculpture 1961–1963, Volume I, London, 2002, pp. 299-300, no. 333 (illustrated).
Exhibited
Kunsthaus Zurich, Andy Warhol, May-July 1978, n.p., no. 52 (illustrated).
Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft and Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Andy Warhol: Bilder 1961 bis 1981, October 1981-February 1982, n.p., no. 7 (illustrated).
Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft and Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Andy Warhol: Bilder 1961 bis 1981, October 1981-February 1982, n.p., no. 7 (illustrated).
Further Details
Andy Warhol’s Double Mona Lisa is an early work which brings together two of art history’s greatest icons. Painted in 1963, shortly after Warhol had shocked the art world with his painting of one hundred Campbell’s Soup cans, it was partly inspired by the phenomenal American tour of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa organized by the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy. After witnessing the crowds who flocked to see the famous painting (including Warhol himself), the artist painted a series of seven canvases featuring the Mona Lisa. One of only two black-and-white double Mona Lisa’s from the 1960s (the other example is in the Menil Collection, Houston), another example (Four Mona Lisa’s) is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Painted shortly after his Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962, Museum of Modern Art, New York), and only within a few months of his Silver Liz canvases of 1963, Double Mona Lisa joins the pantheon of cultural icons that came to define the artist’s career.
As the name suggests, Double Mona Lisa presents two screens of da Vinci’s masterpiece side by side in striking black-and-white monochrome. The left-hand screen displays a slightly cropped version of the original, showing Mona Lisa’s visage against a backdrop of Renaissance Italy. The clarity of this particular screen renders the lush vegetation and meandering rivers of da Vinci’s original in remarkable clarity, even the narrow stone bridge is visible over Mona Lisa’s right shoulder. This clarity continues with the right screen, which presents a close-up of the Mona Lisa’s face, together with her enigmatic smile. This close-up view offers a delicate framing of the face, complete with the diaphanous veil (believed to be a guarnello, worn by Renaissance women while pregnant), and the gold embroidery around the neck of her dark silk dress.
At the time Warhol painted Double Mona Lisa, the painting had recently completed a highly successful U.S. tour. The journey of the world’s most famous work of art from the Louvre in Paris to the United States began almost six months earlier when, during a visit to Washington, the French Minister of Culture André Malraux whispered to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy that he would be able to grant her wish that the Mona Lisa travel to the United States. When the painting was finally unveiled to the public in January of 1963, there was an outpouring of interest in both the painting and in art in general that kick-started America’s love affair with art, marking the beginning of the age of the blockbuster exhibition. “The visit of the Mona Lisa produced the greatest outpouring of appreciation for a single work of art in American history and pioneered the phenomenon of the blockbuster museum show,” said one commentator. “It was one of the most darling, elaborate art exhibitions ever staged, and the painting’s unlikely, romantic journey to America captured the imagination of the world” (M. L. Davis, Mona Lisa in Camelot: How Jacqueline Kennedy and Da Vinci’s Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation, New York, 2008, p. ix). That this event captured Warhol’s imagination should not be a surprise, as it conjured up everything Warhol was fascinated by: fame, beauty and a modicum of art history.
One of the earliest works in which Warhol employed the silkscreen technique, Double Mona Lisa represents an artist on the cutting edge of his primary mode of expression. In 1962, he adopted the printing process to efficiently duplicate preexisting source material in a stylized aesthetic that has become synonymous with Warhol’s name. In Double Mona Lisa, he delights in the act of appropriation and repetition while masterfully subverting conventional ideas of artistic innovation. The Mona Lisa’s appearance in the United States coincided perfectly with the flourishing of Pop, even acting as a catalyst for Warhol’s inevitable fascination with celebrity and popular culture. Like Robert Rauschenberg, who began silkscreening paintings after visiting Warhol’s studio, Warhol embraced the innovative silkscreen technique as it perfectly suited the new direction of his art, allowing for objectivity and seriality. By representing this icon of high art and culture via the silkscreen process, which was previously employed for commercial and industrial endeavors, Warhol mires the boundaries between high and low in classic Warholian fashion.
Warhol was not the first artist to appropriate Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece in a more contemporary manner. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of Warhol’s greatest influences, famously adorned a postcard-sized reproduction of her famous visage with a mustache and goatee. While Duchamp was attempting to subvert the pretenses of museum and high-art culture, Warhol takes Leonardo's subject as a readymade icon, the ultimate celebrity of art history, or a brand as famous as Campbell's Soup. By repeating, cropping, and manipulating the original image, he draws attention to its ubiquity and mass-appeal. Indeed, in 1963, the painting was particularly well-suited for Warhol since, to celebrate the Mona Lisa's arrival in New York, museum vendors and tourist shops sold endless reproductions on coffee cups and tote bags. In fact, the artist's source image for this painting was taken from mass produced Metropolitan Museum's exhibition brochure.
It is with works such as Double Mona Lisa that Warhol established his obsession that would continue throughout much of his career. One of the most striking of Warhol’s portraits, the series demonstrates how the artist encapsulates and commemorates the essence of our burgeoning visual culture. Yet here Warhol also challenges Water Benjamin’s assertion in his seminal essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" that modern photographs and copies challenge the celebration of the ‘original’ as they rob it of its authority. But with Double Mona Lisa, Warhol points to a different conclusion: that it is only because she has been reproduced so many times that she has attained her celebrity status and universal cultural currency.
As the name suggests, Double Mona Lisa presents two screens of da Vinci’s masterpiece side by side in striking black-and-white monochrome. The left-hand screen displays a slightly cropped version of the original, showing Mona Lisa’s visage against a backdrop of Renaissance Italy. The clarity of this particular screen renders the lush vegetation and meandering rivers of da Vinci’s original in remarkable clarity, even the narrow stone bridge is visible over Mona Lisa’s right shoulder. This clarity continues with the right screen, which presents a close-up of the Mona Lisa’s face, together with her enigmatic smile. This close-up view offers a delicate framing of the face, complete with the diaphanous veil (believed to be a guarnello, worn by Renaissance women while pregnant), and the gold embroidery around the neck of her dark silk dress.
At the time Warhol painted Double Mona Lisa, the painting had recently completed a highly successful U.S. tour. The journey of the world’s most famous work of art from the Louvre in Paris to the United States began almost six months earlier when, during a visit to Washington, the French Minister of Culture André Malraux whispered to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy that he would be able to grant her wish that the Mona Lisa travel to the United States. When the painting was finally unveiled to the public in January of 1963, there was an outpouring of interest in both the painting and in art in general that kick-started America’s love affair with art, marking the beginning of the age of the blockbuster exhibition. “The visit of the Mona Lisa produced the greatest outpouring of appreciation for a single work of art in American history and pioneered the phenomenon of the blockbuster museum show,” said one commentator. “It was one of the most darling, elaborate art exhibitions ever staged, and the painting’s unlikely, romantic journey to America captured the imagination of the world” (M. L. Davis, Mona Lisa in Camelot: How Jacqueline Kennedy and Da Vinci’s Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation, New York, 2008, p. ix). That this event captured Warhol’s imagination should not be a surprise, as it conjured up everything Warhol was fascinated by: fame, beauty and a modicum of art history.
One of the earliest works in which Warhol employed the silkscreen technique, Double Mona Lisa represents an artist on the cutting edge of his primary mode of expression. In 1962, he adopted the printing process to efficiently duplicate preexisting source material in a stylized aesthetic that has become synonymous with Warhol’s name. In Double Mona Lisa, he delights in the act of appropriation and repetition while masterfully subverting conventional ideas of artistic innovation. The Mona Lisa’s appearance in the United States coincided perfectly with the flourishing of Pop, even acting as a catalyst for Warhol’s inevitable fascination with celebrity and popular culture. Like Robert Rauschenberg, who began silkscreening paintings after visiting Warhol’s studio, Warhol embraced the innovative silkscreen technique as it perfectly suited the new direction of his art, allowing for objectivity and seriality. By representing this icon of high art and culture via the silkscreen process, which was previously employed for commercial and industrial endeavors, Warhol mires the boundaries between high and low in classic Warholian fashion.
Warhol was not the first artist to appropriate Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece in a more contemporary manner. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of Warhol’s greatest influences, famously adorned a postcard-sized reproduction of her famous visage with a mustache and goatee. While Duchamp was attempting to subvert the pretenses of museum and high-art culture, Warhol takes Leonardo's subject as a readymade icon, the ultimate celebrity of art history, or a brand as famous as Campbell's Soup. By repeating, cropping, and manipulating the original image, he draws attention to its ubiquity and mass-appeal. Indeed, in 1963, the painting was particularly well-suited for Warhol since, to celebrate the Mona Lisa's arrival in New York, museum vendors and tourist shops sold endless reproductions on coffee cups and tote bags. In fact, the artist's source image for this painting was taken from mass produced Metropolitan Museum's exhibition brochure.
It is with works such as Double Mona Lisa that Warhol established his obsession that would continue throughout much of his career. One of the most striking of Warhol’s portraits, the series demonstrates how the artist encapsulates and commemorates the essence of our burgeoning visual culture. Yet here Warhol also challenges Water Benjamin’s assertion in his seminal essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" that modern photographs and copies challenge the celebration of the ‘original’ as they rob it of its authority. But with Double Mona Lisa, Warhol points to a different conclusion: that it is only because she has been reproduced so many times that she has attained her celebrity status and universal cultural currency.
Brought to you by
Emily Kaplan
Senior Vice President, Senior Specialist, Co-Head of 20th Century Evening Sale