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拍品專文
Executed in 1986, Andy Warhol's Double Lenin is a work from the artist's last great series of works, completed in December 1986, only two months before his death in February 1987. Emerging from an inky black background, Warhol's Double Lenin radiates in violet and pink, taking on a near-spectral quality conveyed through the striking glow of his tracery. In Warhol's reimagining of Lenin, the artist undertakes an iconic figure already laden with historicism and notoriety in the collective psyche. He intensifies those characteristics through the signature flattening of his composition, and bold colouring grounded in light and shade. This 'Warholian' treatment highlights the politician's mythologising status through the profound sense of gravitas afforded to his taciturn stare. The repeated image of Double Lenin is a device that Warhol utilised throughout his career to beli an icon's uniqueness through seriality. Like his other 'doubles' of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and Elvis, through this imaging, Warhol highlights only those most iconic features which make them abundantly identifiable in the public sphere. In this case, with its references to mechanical reproduction, the pictorial device of doubling by means of the silkscreen process takes on additional resonance in the realm of Lenin's politics, where 'machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all...' (V. Lenin, 'To the Rural Poor' 1903, V. Lenin, Collected Works: 6 January 1902 - August 1903, vol. 6, London 1961, p. 366).
Drawing many similarities with his other series profiling Communist leader Mao, in his Lenin series, Warhol builds on those ideas first developed in 1972. Thanks to the cult of personality perpetuated around Lenin after his death, his image was widely disseminated as a symbol of the Communist cause, making him in many respects the leading exponent of communist Pop. Like his Mao series, here the artist chose to bring the image of a Communist icon, which through his own 'factory', was elevated to the iconic status of the celebrity forever more. Warhol took as his source image a relatively obscure photograph of a young Lenin that had been shown to him the year before by gallerist Bernd Klüser. Dead since 1924, Lenin was still a potent symbol of Communism in the East and West. In Soviet Russia, his image remained bound up in the cult of personality used after his death to perpetuate the Communist ideal; in the West he represented the Red peril, which was still potent in the American psyche as Cold War arms discussions between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev continued to break down. Warhol's uncanny ability to tap into the cultural zeitgeist is abundantly present in his Lenin series, with the man epitomising Warhol's interest in those individuals who were able to attain celebrity status, ultimately at the expense of their own perceived individuality.
Not the iconic profile of the politician that had come to define Lenin through the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Warhol's chosen image presents a self-assured young man with piercing eyes surrounded by the trappings of an intellectual, every bit the politician whose practices were rooted in theory. Indeed Warhol gave similar treatment to Lenin's head and his books, which not only anchor the composition but also reinforce the perception of Lenin as an authority on Marxist doctrine. Significantly, Warhol's source image was already a photograph which had been 'doctored'. The photograph Klüser showed Warhol in 1985 was only a detail extracted in 1948 from a group photograph of 1897 showing Lenin surrounded by those Social-Democrats who would eventually become his enemies. Warhol modified this image further, reducing the range of colours and placing a stark, glowing tracery around the salient details of the image that sharply contrast with the saturated black background. And in ultimate 'Warholian' humor and subversion, the artist achieved this feat with the image of the one person who would be most horrified by these turn of events: 'as for these portraits! They are all over the place! What is the point of it all?' (V. Lenin in letter to Bontch-Bruyevich, 1918, Lenin by Warhol, exh. cat., Galerie Bernd Klüser, Munich, 1987, p. 67). Like a contemporary spin doctor, in his depictions of Lenin, Warhol has created the ultimate icon - one completely constructed of his own making, lending potency to an image that enabled it to surpass the icon previously exalted by the world.
Drawing many similarities with his other series profiling Communist leader Mao, in his Lenin series, Warhol builds on those ideas first developed in 1972. Thanks to the cult of personality perpetuated around Lenin after his death, his image was widely disseminated as a symbol of the Communist cause, making him in many respects the leading exponent of communist Pop. Like his Mao series, here the artist chose to bring the image of a Communist icon, which through his own 'factory', was elevated to the iconic status of the celebrity forever more. Warhol took as his source image a relatively obscure photograph of a young Lenin that had been shown to him the year before by gallerist Bernd Klüser. Dead since 1924, Lenin was still a potent symbol of Communism in the East and West. In Soviet Russia, his image remained bound up in the cult of personality used after his death to perpetuate the Communist ideal; in the West he represented the Red peril, which was still potent in the American psyche as Cold War arms discussions between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev continued to break down. Warhol's uncanny ability to tap into the cultural zeitgeist is abundantly present in his Lenin series, with the man epitomising Warhol's interest in those individuals who were able to attain celebrity status, ultimately at the expense of their own perceived individuality.
Not the iconic profile of the politician that had come to define Lenin through the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Warhol's chosen image presents a self-assured young man with piercing eyes surrounded by the trappings of an intellectual, every bit the politician whose practices were rooted in theory. Indeed Warhol gave similar treatment to Lenin's head and his books, which not only anchor the composition but also reinforce the perception of Lenin as an authority on Marxist doctrine. Significantly, Warhol's source image was already a photograph which had been 'doctored'. The photograph Klüser showed Warhol in 1985 was only a detail extracted in 1948 from a group photograph of 1897 showing Lenin surrounded by those Social-Democrats who would eventually become his enemies. Warhol modified this image further, reducing the range of colours and placing a stark, glowing tracery around the salient details of the image that sharply contrast with the saturated black background. And in ultimate 'Warholian' humor and subversion, the artist achieved this feat with the image of the one person who would be most horrified by these turn of events: 'as for these portraits! They are all over the place! What is the point of it all?' (V. Lenin in letter to Bontch-Bruyevich, 1918, Lenin by Warhol, exh. cat., Galerie Bernd Klüser, Munich, 1987, p. 67). Like a contemporary spin doctor, in his depictions of Lenin, Warhol has created the ultimate icon - one completely constructed of his own making, lending potency to an image that enabled it to surpass the icon previously exalted by the world.