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ANDY WARHOL About This Work: Andy Warhol was the most successful and highly paid commercial illustrator in New York even before he began to make art destined for galleries. Neverthless, his screenprinted images of Marilyn Monroe, soup cans, movie stars and sensational newspaper stories, quickly became synonymous with Pop Art. Pop Art marked an important new stage in the breakdown between high and low art forms. Warhol’s paintings from the early 1960s were important in pioneering these developments, but it is arguable that the diverse activities of his later years were just as influential in expanding the implications of Pop Art into other spaces, and further eroding the borders between the worlds of high art and popular culture. Andy Warhol is now considered one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century, who created some of the most recognizable images ever produced. After the the success of the Campbell’s Soup Series in the early 1960s, indeed, Warhol began creating screenprints of movie star portraits including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and Ingrid Bergman. The Ingrid Bergman Series is made up of three types of screen prints. The source images used for these portrait pieces include a publicity photo (Herself), and movie stills from her role in Casablanca (With Hat) and from the movie The Bell of St. Mary’s (The Nun). Of course, when we think of Ingrid Bergman, we think of her playing Ilsa, the long lost love interest of Rick, played by Humphrey Bogart. No one can ever forget Bergman standing on the runway, all teary eyed and wearing the famous hat, as Bogart makes her get on that plane. However, many people do not realize that the movie The Bell Of St. Mary’s was enormously popular, the highest-grossing movie of 1945 in the USA. In this movie, Ingrid Bergman is the leading female role and stars together with famous actor and singer Bing Crosby, who plays the unconventional Father Charles “Chuck” O’Malley, assigned to St. Mary’s parish. The parish includes a school building on the verge of being condemned; but the sisters of the parish feel that God will provide for them. Father O’Malley and the dedicated but stubborn Sister Superior, Mary Benedict (Ingrid Bergman), both wish to save the school, but they have different views and methods. This portrait of Ingrid Bergman in her most severe role is made even more dramatic in this iconic print. The vibrant color palette is made dynamic through Warhol’s exciting element of abstraction, the yellow lines making her figure and makeup pop, with her hands clasped in prayer and only sketched with yellow lines. Like the majority of his works, once again, this print is indicative of Warhol’s obsession with all things relating to fame, especially movie stars. For this reason, his artwork can also be considered as a sort of visual recording of the culture of his time. |
Tag Archives: moviestars
WOW – Work Of the Week – Basquiat “Hollywood Africans In Front Of The Chinese Theater With Footprints Of Movie Stars”
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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT Hollywood Africans In Front Of The Chinese Theater With Footprints Of Movie Stars1983/201523 color screenprint38 1/2 x 84 in.Artist’s Proof (A.P.) of 15Certified authentic, signed, dated and numbered on verso by Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Estate
About This Work: In less than a decade the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat went from being a teenage graffiti writer to an international art star; he was dead of a drug overdose at age twenty-seven. A legend in his own lifetime. Basquiat’s meteoric success and overnight burnout were an instant art-world myth; his brief career spanned the giddy ’80s art boom and epitomized its outrageous excess, from its art dealers to its drug dealers, from its clubs to its galleries, from Madonna to Warhol. Basquiat was very fearful of the unfavorable racial reality in America, and saw himself as in no small amount of danger. These feelings often presented themselves in Basquiat’s work, which was typically socially and politically charged. His paintings were highly symbolic in nature and often focused on what he saw as intrinsic dichotomies, such as the wealthy versus the impoverished or integration versus segregation. The subject of this impressive artwork is related to the widely known 1983 artwork Hollywood Africans, currently owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art. It depicts Basquiat with friends, the artists Toxic and Rammellzee. Toxic is the figure on the left, Rammellzee is the central face (as it can be seen by the green letters RMLZ on top of the head) and Basquiat is the right figure, as it can also be deduced from the typical shape of Basquiat’s hair. Hollywood Africans represents a commentary on the stereotyping and marginalizing of African Americans in the entertainment industry. This theme led these three artists to coin the term and refer to themselves as the “Hollywood Africans”. Furthermore, this is a very current theme, it has even been the controversy of last night’s Oscars ceremonies, where several black actors and actresses have emphasized the necessity of equal rights and wages in the movie industry. In this work, Basquiat challenges the art world by merging academic and “primitive” through his neo-expressionist style, which is recognizable by some stylistic choices: for example, when he chooses to represent his teeth not by drawing them but by writing the word TEETH, which is graphically very similar to what can be a a set of teeth. We can also notice his typical calligraphy, tough gesture and shrill colors. This is a very important work. It is a very large, moving, biographical, historical account based on the artist’s life and the recurrent issues that surrounded him during his time, and which continue to linger on in today’s time.  Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hollywood Africans, 1983, acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 84 1/16 x 84 in.  NBA all star of the Miami Heat and renown art collector Amare Stoudemire with Basquiat’s Hollywood Africans In Front Of The Chinese Theater With Footprints Of Movie Stars in his new Miami home.
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