Can we look at the works by Andy Warhol through new means?

Christie’s (on November, 12) will offer one of the most famous Pop Art masterworks by Andy Warhol as the highlight of its evening sale. Painted in 1962, the piece is titled «Coca-Cola (3)»and is a unique hand-painted picture, not a silkscreen. Over the years, it has become the epitome of Pop. The work has resided within the same private collection for almost two decades, and has been featured prominently in every major Warhol exhibition. Now, it is estimated at $40 to $60 million.

 

The day after Christie’s auction, another work by the same artist, «Silver Car Crash» (1963) will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s, still in New York. It is one of the four monumental works of the series « Double Disaster» (the other three are at MOMA in NY, at the Kunstmuseum in Basel and at the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Stiftung of Vienna). This work has been in important collections such as the one of Gian Enzo Sperone, Charles Saatchi, and the Swiss merchant Thomas Amman. In 1972 it was included in the famous exhibition organized by Gunther Sachs in Hamburg where, however, the sales had disastrous results. On the contrary, today, the painting is estimated at around $60 million (but the exact estimate at Sotheby’s auction is available only upon request).

 

We do not know which of the two works will get the most market outcome. But we can make a consideration on the work by Andy Warhol as a whole. There is indeed a great spiritual component in his pieces that has not been sufficiently appreciated. It is a dimension that is not directly linked to the historical era in which the pop art was born, rather it is connected to a poetics of the absolute: it has relations with the soul rather than with the time.

 

«If you insist on seeing only the consecration of a bottle of Coca Cola in the art of Warhol» wrote the art critic Marco Di Capua «then you get to determine also the depletion of its charm. Today we know that the mark of Apple has overtaken that of the drink from his stable leadership, and that means several things: the brand change function; the era of consumerism euphoria is over; and behind the word “communication” are entering new values»: for example «spirituality».

 

Probably, nowadays, when talking about the art of Warhol, the best definition that can be given is the one dictated by the artist Robert Longo: «I have the distinct feeling» he said «that Warhol was trying to return a heart to what was almost dead». And this is why his art is still alive.

July 15, 2015