Warhol Paintings: Flowers
Nov 01th, 2010
Andy Warhol changed art forever. He is an undeniable, defining feature of modern art history, and his work is prized as a pivotal and necessary feature at Guy Hepner. His Flower Paintings series comes late in his life, and offers an expanse of insight into a legend's artistic mind through a seemingly mundane subject.
The idea to paint flowers as the subject of a major series was apparently suggested to Warhol by Henry Geldzahler, then curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. To some degree, the pictures belong to a long art historical tradition of still-life painting.
"With the Flowers, Andy was just trying a different subject matter. In a funny way, he was kind of repeating the history of art. It was like, now we're doing my Flower period! Like Monet's water lilies, Van Gogh's flowers, the genre." (Gerard Malanga as cited in A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, New York 2003, p. 74).
The Flowers paintings followed Warhol's Death and Disaster series of 1962-1963--sensational images of electric chairs, suicides and horrendous car-crashes. While the Flowers can be seen as the vacuous flip-side of this horror and violence, there are some critics who believe that they are still permeated by Warhol's deep obsession with death. "What is incredible about the best of the flower paintings (especially the large ones) is that they present a distillation of much of the strength of Warhol's art--the flash of beauty that suddenly becomes tragic under the viewer's gaze. The garish and brilliantly colored flowers always gravitate toward the surrounding blackness and finally end up in a sea of morbidity. No matter how much one wishes these flowers to remain beautiful they perish under one's gaze, as if haunted by death." (J. Coplans, "Andy Warhol: The Art", Andy Warhol, exh. cat., Pasadena Art Museum, 1970, p.52).
Please contact the gallery for further information and availability. Appointments are available 7 days a week for private viewing and discussing your collecting needs.
Guy Hepner
300 N Robertson Blvd.
West Hollywood CA, 90048
info@guyhepner.com
Tel: +1 310.979.0011
www.guyhepner.com
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