Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century
| Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century |
|---|
| Andy Warhol , 1980 |
| Screen printing on acrylic on canvas / on cardboard |
| 101.6 x 81.2 cm |
|
Link to the picture |
Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century (Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th century) is the title of a series of paintings and a screen printing binder of American Pop Art -Künstlers Andy Warhol from the year 1980th
description
The ten serigraphs on acrylic on canvas show the actress Sarah Bernhardt , the American lawyer Louis Brandeis , the philosopher Martin Buber , the physicist Albert Einstein , the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud , the composer George Gershwin , the writer Franz Kafka , the Marx Brothers , the Israeli one Prime Minister Golda Meir and the American writer Gertrude Stein . The individual panels measure 101.6 × 81.2 cm. Warhol used press and archive photographs as templates, as none of the portrayed were alive at the time. He cropped the photos and provided them with his typical graphic elements, line drawings and collage-like color areas. When choosing colors, Warhol gave preference to blue and red tones, which he placed in a cold-warm contrast to one another. Orange and skin tones set isolated accents and lights and create an apparent spatiality. In the portrait of the Marx Brothers , Warhol used an inversion of three heads of the brothers in the first vertical row . The portrait series was also made as an artist's portfolio by Warhol's screen printer Rupert Jasen Smith on Lenox museum cardboard. These works are each numbered and signed.
background
The screen printing series was created at the suggestion of the New York gallery owner Ronald Feldman, who also supported Warhol in choosing the people. Warhol had already commissioned portraits of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1973. This series gave Feldman the idea of portraying important Jewish people in contemporary history and approached Warhol with a list of around 100 names. After a lengthy selection process, Feldman and Warhol agreed on a representative each from the fields of literature, film, philosophy, music, medicine, jurisprudence and science, whereby, according to Warhol employee Bob Collacello, “Ronald Feldman was more likely to make the final selection. Andy wasn't sure who Buber and Brandeis were. He liked Golda Meir, 'because we already have a screen print of her.' And he also showed mild enthusiasm for the Hollywood contingent, Groucho, Harpo and Chico as well as for Sarah Bernhardt, although he could not believe that Sarah Bernhardt was Jewish. "
To promote sales of the portfolios, Ronald Feldman organized an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York from September 17, 1980 to January 4, 1981.
Ronald Feldman encouraged Warhol to make many more print folders in the 1980s. In the period that followed, the Pop Art artist concentrated on the screen prints of historical personalities such as Alexander the Great , Goethe , Friedrich the Great and Lenin .
Reviews
As Warhol biographer David Bourdon recalled, the exhibition inspired the conservative critic Hilton Kramer to write a “ jeremiad ” in the New York Times : “In view of the great suffering that the people of Israel have suffered in the course of their long history, would be It is an exaggeration to say that the new Andy Warhol exhibition increases this suffering to an appreciable extent. No doubt about it, the exhibition is simply profane. It smells of commerce and its contribution to art is zero. "
Bourdon himself had doubts “whether the poppy, strongly stylized style, which is certainly appropriate for portraits of society lions and personalities from show business, suited comparatively strict thinkers like Buber, Freud or Kafka. In the case of Bernhardt and Stein, both of whom had been portrayed several times by leading artists of their time, it certainly took some courage. "
literature
- Jonathan Safran Foer et al .: Andy Warhol. Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century . Jablonka, 2008, ISBN 978-3-931354-40-4 (English)
- David Bourdon: Warhol , DuMont, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-7701-2338-7 , pp. 384-385.
Web links
- Andy Warhol: 10 portraits of Jews of the 20th century ( Memento of February 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ): National Portrait Gallery , London
Individual evidence
- ↑ quoted from Bob Colacello: Holy Terror. Andy Warhol Close Up . HarperCollins, New York 1990, pp. 444-445; see. Andy Warhol - Collages for Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century. (PDF; 50 kB) Jablonka Gallery, 2008, archived from the original on June 23, 2013 ; Retrieved January 27, 2010 .
- ^ A b c David Bourdon: Warhol , DuMont, Cologne 1989, pp. 384–385
- ^ Hilton Kramer: Art: Warhol Show at Jewish Museum in: The New York Times , September 19, 1980; see. David Bourdon: Warhol , DuMont, Cologne 1989, p. 385