Feb. 6, 2012 at 11:31pm with 5 notes
andy warhol
Andy Warhol. Skulls This is a masterwork that is at once iconic and aesthetically brilliant. The compilation of these ten canvases provides the perfect assemblage of replication as they invite the viewer’s eye to constantly skip from one to another in a continual dance of comparison and evolving perception. By replicating the same motif Warhol simultaneously multiplies and dilutes the power of the imagery: through repetition his works transform from individual images to potent icons. Indeed, the tremendously rare preservation of so many of these paintings in this multiple layout sustains Warhol’s deeply-held desire for his works to be shown as series and viewed together. By repeating the skull subject as a powerful symbol of death the artist both magnifies and desensitizes our fear of mortality. Similarly, this motif at once represents both everybody and nobody: devoid of the vital coordinates of facial individuality - hair, eye and skin colour; length of nose; prominence of brow; undulations of cheeks - the skull possesses an uncompromising universality. In addition, by colouring the skull canvases with vivacious hues of acrylic paint he manifests a stark, satirical contrast with the morbid and sombre subject matter. Brilliantly pure reds, yellows, greens, blues, and purples blaze out of the work, beautifully balanced by the purity of the more austere monochrome canvases that punctuate the rhythm of the work. The vivacity of these colours and their exciting arrangements are really exceptional, not only setting primary, secondary and tertiary colours off against each other, but also forging new conceptual ground with the laying of reflective black silkscreen ink over matt acrylic blacks and dark greys. Fluid brushstrokes and the emphatic tracings of finger-marks have manipulated the acrylic paint layers into haptic surfaces full of poetic movement, whose plastic dynamism recounts the bodily movements that created them. In direct contrast to the cool objectivity of his 1960s works, which sought to eradicate the energetic excesses of Abstract Expressionism with the objective reproduction and flat surface of the mechanical silkscreen, Skulls epitomises Warhol’s later investigation into painterly texture as the backdrop for the liquid silkscreen ink. The colourist optimism and vitality only serves to underline the transience of life pitted against the omnipotence of death. Warhol’s point - ever concise and brilliantly pithy - is that even death, the final adversary of Humankind, becomes mere lurid mundanity when perceived through the contemporary agency of repetition. note: currently trying to get this poster framed, but will most likely have to go custom…

Andy Warhol. Skulls

This is a masterwork that is at once iconic and aesthetically brilliant. The compilation of these ten canvases provides the perfect assemblage of replication as they invite the viewer’s eye to constantly skip from one to another in a continual dance of comparison and evolving perception. By replicating the same motif Warhol simultaneously multiplies and dilutes the power of the imagery: through repetition his works transform from individual images to potent icons. Indeed, the tremendously rare preservation of so many of these paintings in this multiple layout sustains Warhol’s deeply-held desire for his works to be shown as series and viewed together.

By repeating the skull subject as a powerful symbol of death the artist both magnifies and desensitizes our fear of mortality. Similarly, this motif at once represents both everybody and nobody: devoid of the vital coordinates of facial individuality - hair, eye and skin colour; length of nose; prominence of brow; undulations of cheeks - the skull possesses an uncompromising universality. In addition, by colouring the skull canvases with vivacious hues of acrylic paint he manifests a stark, satirical contrast with the morbid and sombre subject matter. Brilliantly pure reds, yellows, greens, blues, and purples blaze out of the work, beautifully balanced by the purity of the more austere monochrome canvases that punctuate the rhythm of the work. The vivacity of these colours and their exciting arrangements are really exceptional, not only setting primary, secondary and tertiary colours off against each other, but also forging new conceptual ground with the laying of reflective black silkscreen ink over matt acrylic blacks and dark greys. Fluid brushstrokes and the emphatic tracings of finger-marks have manipulated the acrylic paint layers into haptic surfaces full of poetic movement, whose plastic dynamism recounts the bodily movements that created them. In direct contrast to the cool objectivity of his 1960s works, which sought to eradicate the energetic excesses of Abstract Expressionism with the objective reproduction and flat surface of the mechanical silkscreen, Skulls epitomises Warhol’s later investigation into painterly texture as the backdrop for the liquid silkscreen ink. The colourist optimism and vitality only serves to underline the transience of life pitted against the omnipotence of death. Warhol’s point - ever concise and brilliantly pithy - is that even death, the final adversary of Humankind, becomes mere lurid mundanity when perceived through the contemporary agency of repetition.

note: currently trying to get this poster framed, but will most likely have to go custom…

  1. thefinalact posted this