Two decades after the death of the artist Andy Warhol the brand is stronger than ever as collectors continue to pay high prices for his work, curators explore the dark aspects of his career, and consumers are snapping up products, candy to condoms coated with its images.
When the Campbell Soup Company has paid tribute to Andy Warhol, the Pop artist, who alone turn red and white label brand into a symbol of wealth and power, the company has proposed a series of limited edition boxes tomato soup with labels based on color combinations silkscreen artist: aqua green and red, pink and orange and indigo, yellow and gold.
The line was inaugurated in 2004 in western Pennsylvania and Ohio stores to Giant Eagle supermarket chain. Customers who bought the four-packs, priced at $2 per package, are also entitled to purchase a limited edition Warhol Campbell Soup four magnets and can, by showing their Giant Eagle Advantage cards, could obtain a reduction dollars on the cost of admission to Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh native artist.
Campbell Director of Brand Communications, John Faulkner, told ARTnews that the company has since responded to calls from across the United States and Canada and Europe, from buyers who wanted to get their hands on the soup cans of Andy Warhol. However, under the agreement, the promotion has been limited in participating stores.
Then in 2006 Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York, the luxury department store, made nearly identical limited edition Warhol soup cans (labels were printed on high quality paper) to the display of holiday the store, called “Happy Andy War-Holidays!”
Doonan told ARTnews that over 30,000 of these boxes were sold, priced at $ 12 each or $ 48 for the four-pack. The demand for boxes in fact “cannibalized” business gifts shop upscale this year, Doonan said. “At the end of the day, all these high flying people seeking a bargain. Andy would have loved it. Instead of being $ 1,200 of art or a vase for $ 400, they went to the Warhol boxes because he felt cool.”
At about the same time as promoting Barneys, the highest price ever paid for the auction of Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup can painting was done at Christie’s New York, where a bidder paid $ 11.8 million for 1962 Small Torn Campbell’s Soup Can (Pepper Pot), 2006.
Did Barneys buyers even know that the boxes had already been offered in supermarkets campaign at a fraction of the price? Would they have cared? How two almost identical articles being in such demand at extremely divergent? “People have responded in both high and low culture,” said Michael Hermann, director of licensing at The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York.
“If you look Warhol, it is still high and low,” said Tom Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum. “It was a boy of the working class during the depression who lived in a town highly stratified. He saw what the “haves” had, and he wanted both to be able to decide which was real and who was the poseur. He eventually became the one who told the world how to be cool. ”
More than two decades after the death of Andy Warhol in New York in 1987 at the age of 58 years, the demand for his images is stronger than ever. Prices for his paintings among the highest recorded for all genres.
Many experts point to Sotheby’s $ 17.3 million from sales of Orange Marilyn (1964) in New York in 1998 as a milestone that has propelled the market for contemporary art to a new level and marked the beginning of a new era. In May 2007, a buyer has paid $ 71.7 million at Christie’s for 1963 Green Car Crash paintings, more than quadrupling the previous record. Prices remained high despite the contraction of the art market.
Warhol’s works are especially popular among newly rich collectors around the world, particularly Asia and Russia. Several months before the sale of Green Car Crash, 1972 Mao painting sold at Christie’s New York for $ 17.4 million to Joseph Lau Hong Kong developer.
“The Mao was extremely important because it put Warhol in the same league as de Kooning and other Abstract Expressionists,” said Brett Gorvy, cohead art of postwar and contemporary at Christie’s. “He had an impact major market for small objects like Jackies individual and his self-portraits. “Gorvy note that the interests of wealthy Asian buyers degenerated to this point.” The whole market suddenly life. In 2007, everyone wanted a Warhol, “he said.
Alex Rotter, head of Sotheby’s contemporary art in New York, said that Warhol’s prolific production means that its market is also “the easiest to follow, because you can compare apples to apples, we can compare a work to other works by this period. There is agreement on what makes a work better than another. Warhol is probably the biggest contemporary art market, the dollar volume-wise and judicious.”
against Andy Warhol and imaging have been plastered on thousands of products sold worldwide, candy to condoms. Michael Hermann led a three man team that manages all licenses of products, which significantly increased from what Herman describes as “passive in nature for the first ten years.” Among the licensed products past and present for candy, clothing, porcelain and glass, perfumes, watches, carpets, and jewelry. Condom packages sold in Japan with camouflage print of Warhol’s distinctive convey the message: “They’ll never see you coming ”
Interest Warhol continues to grow with an ever younger and wider. “Andy would love” is a refrain often heard when talking about society’s obsession with celebrities or its attachment to the disaster, which Warhol has explored in his “Death and Disaster” series. Months after the death of Michael Jackson in June, a Warhol portrait of the star in 1984 sold at auction for over $ 1,000,000. The buyer had acquired a few months ago for just under $ 300,000.
In dozens of shows in museums and galleries around the world each year, curators and experts to find new Warhol topics related to mine, exploring all media Warhol and even worked in his bohemian lifestyle . Earlier this year, La Maison Rouge in Paris, author Judith Benhamou-Huet has organized an exhibition, “Warhol TV”, with material ranging from the mid-60s series imitation (in which the artist added small ads) to a reality-show style, who documented life at the Factory, the studio New York, where Warhol concoct his art and the Court has held more than one matching group of assistants, fans, celebrities, and courtiers.
The recent exhibition Andy Warhol Museum, Warhol Live, “has reviewed the work of the artist through the prism of music and performing arts. It featured paintings, including portraits of Mick Jagger and Deborah Harry as well as films, videos, album covers, and ephemera in the archives of Warhol.
Warhol films, he produced more than 650 in five years in 1963, also received the attention of serious researchers and conservation. In 2007, they were the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.
“For reasons both of film was the perfect way to Warhol,” said David Schwartz, chief curator of the museum. It was “an environment where he can express his fascination with time, fame, death, sexuality, and many more, including the complex relationship between the viewer and the viewed,” said Schwartz. “Warhol often claimed to be a passive observer, but it was like a great director, always in control.”
In September, the Milwaukee Art Museum opened “Andy Warhol: the last decade,” described as the first exhibition in the United States to explore the work of the late artist. “Do we really need another show Warhol?” Curator Joseph Ketner II, now a professor of contemporary art at Emerson College in Boston, said he was asked during the organization of the show. “Yes,” he says emphatically, noting that the paintings the artist’s hand and turned his collaborations with other artists, like Jean-Michel Basquiat. “What makes this period, a special in Warhol’s career is that he seems to have assembled the various strategies for making art. You see different aspects of his work to come together. ”
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, created after the artist’s death, plays an active role in managing and promoting the brand Warhol, and he is also a generous donor to the arts. It has lent more than 11,000 works by more than 221 exhibitions since its formation in 1987.
Joel Wachs, a former adviser Los Angeles and one time mayoral candidate, served as president since 2001. He oversees a team of 25 full-time and four part-time employees (including managers and curators of art, editorial staff and researchers for catalogs reasoned, and licenses, programs and support staff general).
Herman believes that the licensed products in the thousands. It does not have an exact number because some products are only available for a limited time. Licensing fees totaled $ 2.5 billion this year compared to just over $ 400,000 in 1997.
Wachs said that products for which certificates are requested must “strengthen the legacy of Warhol.” Asked about the proposal were rejected, he said, “We do not cigarettes, it’s a no-no.” But even Andy opposed to smoking? In 1966, he took out an ad in the Village Voice that said: “I’ll sign my name to any of the following: clothing, AC-DC, cigarettes, small tapes, sound equipment, RECORDS Rock N ‘Roll anything, film equipment and film, Food, Helium, Whips, Money! love and kisses ANDY WARHOL, EL 5-9941. “It was an offer strangely prescient considering the number of products now bear his name.
Clothing is by far the best seller, “said Hermann. Andy Warhol Flower printed signature grace line of swimsuits, caftans, cover-ups and bags Diana von Furstenberg, the designer celebrities who partied with Warhol has been painted by him. Products line von Furstenberg, which is a private company and does not disclose sales figures, ranging from $ 120 for a towel printed $ 485 for a chiffon caftan.
Warhol’s influence on fashion and the music was already evident during his lifetime. In an interview with Deborah Harry in 1986, the singer says that Warhol held his seer-pink, yellow, orange dress, leggings and boots, all designed by Stephen Sprouse, is based on one of his paintings of camouflage. Warhol replied, “Oh… it’s beautiful… it’s great. “After Harry asks him to sign the holding Warhol squats with a ballpoint autograph his leggings, commenting,” Oh, I’m nervous. I’ve never had a leg famous. ”
In late 2007, the company unveiled a Vermont Burton 2008 range of snowboards, boots, bindings, outerwear, travel bags, featuring Andy Warhol prints. Prices ranged from $ 70 for a shirt to $ 550 for a board. (The 2008 line is no longer available on the market, but eBay and other online retailers still offer the goods.) For the 2010 season, Burton is also a snowboard upscale called “Vapor” which features images collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Warhol is priced at $ 1,195.
Hermann said that the foundation carefully guard against any unauthorized use of copyrights and trademarks. Although the lawsuits were brought against offenders regularly over the last two decades, he said that during the ten years he worked in the licensing department has never been any challenge in court.
Hermann admits that the foundation was initially less willing to license a fragrance. “We were not convinced that the idea made sense,” he said. However, this attitude has changed a few years ago when the foundation joined forces with the upscale New York fragrance company Bond No. 9, which has developed and branded perfumes that connect to specific locations Warhol in New York. Following the Silver Factory, Lexington Avenue and Union Square, Fourth society Warhol perfume on the theme, the success is a job in New York, priced at $ 220 per 100 milliliters and containing the artist’s distinctive neon dollar sign on the bottle, was released last month.
The Warhol Foundation awareness also includes a grant program that provides funding for museum exhibitions, artist residencies, arts and writing, and also aims to help provide affordable health care and insurance for artists. One of the entities most publicized of the Creative Capital Foundation is an independent non-profit located in the downtown office of the foundation, which provides grants directly to individual artists on a project basis. Earlier this year he announced grants totaling $2.5 million for 41 projects, including innovative initiatives literary, arts emerging and performing arts.
This year to date, general subsidies from the foundation went to institutions across the country. In New York, $80,000 was donated to the Foundation Art and CUE $ 100,000 (over two years) at the Centre for Drawing. In Los Angeles, $ 100,000 were awarded to the Museum of Contemporary Art in the “Light of Latin America and Space” show and $ 75,000 at the Hammer Museum for a show of Rachel Whiteread. The Oklahoma-based contemporary center- arts, arts in Tulsa, received $ 100,000 (over three years) to support the program.
The foundation also provides between 20 and 25 per cent annual Museum Andy Warhol’s. He gave the museum’s original 3000 work, then $61 million, when the initiative in collaboration with New York, Dia Center for the Arts and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, was announced in 1989. The donation consisted of over 800 paintings and 1000 drawings, sculptures, prints, films and video tapes and audio.
In 2007, the Foundation gave the museum six years, grant 654,000 dollars to help sort through 610 boxes of capsules Warhol, the artist had packed, sealed and stored as a kind of diary. Warhol threw in everything from letters, invitations, photos, papers, books and random items like a glass of wine at the Hotel Carlyle in cash, and even food. Each box contains 400 to 1200 points. Archivists have also met with grocery receipts for the Campbell’s soup, Warhol once said that he ate every day for 20 years.
The Board of Trustees, which includes among its member artists Cindy Sherman, Shirin Neshat, and John Waters, has passed a budget increase this year grants for a little less than $12 million from 11.65 million dollars . In addition, the Foundation donated $5.7 million of art this year at 180 colleges and university museums in the framework of the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy was launched in 2007 as a way to donate carefully organized group photo of the artist to institutions across the country. Many are already using the equipment for stage performances. These include the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University in Kansas, who unveiled Snap: Andy Warhol Photographs, 1970-1987, “in September.
The foundation has also spent millions, Wachs said, to research and produce a comprehensive multivolume catalog raisonné of Warhol’s works in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, a project led by Warhol expert Neil Printz. Two volumes devoted to paintings, prints and sculptures have been made, the third, documenting the works from 1970 to 1974, is expected from Phaidon Press next spring. At this point, Wachs said, there are no plans for a catalog of photographs of Warhol, although the board did consider authentication.
“The authentication board limits the number of works examined about 100 pieces per session,” said Claudia Defendi, co-author of the catalog and deputy secretary of the board of directors. There are three sessions per year, and “more when circumstances warrant. ” The number of works from the Commission declined since 1995 amounts to about 15 percent, Defendi said.
If Warhol meant what he said when he advised people not to worry about what others have written about them, but simply “the measure in inches,” he would probably appreciate the incredible attention and ever increasing focus on his life and work. “Publicity is like eating peanuts,” he said. “Once you start you can not stop.”
Warhol’s friend Jeremiah Newton summed up perfectly the phenomenon in a Warhol photodocumentary compiled by students at NYU. Mr. Newton, “I do not think he ever left. He is always knocking around… He never really died, you know… Andy is everywhere. It is in Europe. Asia. He is quoted in the newspapers every day. He still has energy. It’s just, you know, still alive.”
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