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拍品专文
‘Truman’s closets are bursting with hats and shoes. He’s big on accessories because he likes his outfits to be coordinated. If his bow tie is maroon so are his socks. His favourite colours are maroon, mustard, pink peach, and brown.’ – Andy Warhol
‘My favourite writer is Truman Capote. I love the way he writes; I love the way he lives.’ – Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol’s double-portrait Truman Capote comprises two identical portraits of the author, presented side by side as a diptych. Warhol had a well documented fascination with Capote, calling his first solo exhibition Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote, 1952. After decades of unrequited admiration, their paths began to cross more frequently, and eventually, Warhol famously traded a year’s worth of columns in his magazine, Interview, for a portrait of the author. Capote was well-known after the publication of his novella Breakfast at Tifany’s (1958), but only after In Cold Blood (1966) did he achieve any sort of celebrity. In that same year, he began hosting the now-legendary Black and White ball at New York’s Plaza hotel, and developed a jet-set social life. In Truman Capote, Warhol has photographed Capote in a jaunty wide-brimmed hat, the central focus of each canvas. These are identical compositions; only the colour of the hat stands out: Warhol has inked one in blue and the other in yellow, suggesting a dual essence to Capote. Warhol’s extensive series of portraits draws on and encapsulates many of the themes that so fascinated the artist throughout his career: consumerism, celebrity, and social status, among others. For each of portrait, Warhol took countless Polaroids, doing his best to ensure that each sitter looked both fascinating and desirable. Indeed, he understood the potential power of images, and that photography could be both a ‘factual recording of reality and the romantic projection of magic and makebelief’ (T. Shafrazi, Andy Warhol Portraits, London, 2007, p. 16). From the myriad Polaroids taken, an image was selected, a negative was created which was then transferred onto a silkscreen. Along with an assistant, Warhol would squeegee ink through the screen, often conducting colour tests to ensure the ink registered. As art historian Robert Rosenblum wrote, ‘It was Warhol’s masterstroke to realize that the best method of electrifying the old-master portrait tradition with sufficient energy to absorb the real, living world was, now that we see it in retrospect, painfully obvious. The most commonplace source of visual information about our famous contemporaries is, after all, the photographic image, whether it comes from the pages of the Daily News or Vogue’ (R. Rosenblum, ‘Andy Warhol: Court Painter to the 70s’, Andy Warhol Portraits, London, 1993, pp. 140-141). Warhol has been credited with resurrecting the grand-style portraiture once seen in royal courts, and his glittery portraits of the decade sharply contrast with more austere screen-prints of the 1960s. Certainly, by 1979, he was well-installed within the celebrity world. His sitters included Mick Jagger, Liza Minelli, and Diane von Furstenberg, among others, his portraits a fusion of high-fashion photograph and paparazzi snapshot. As with so much of Warhol’s work, these portraits meditate on the surface image, and like the snapshot, they can only ever be so revealing. Despite his outward gaze, Capote is inscrutable, flattened by the silk-screen and the flash of the camera, cerebral, mysterious, and impossibly individual.
‘My favourite writer is Truman Capote. I love the way he writes; I love the way he lives.’ – Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol’s double-portrait Truman Capote comprises two identical portraits of the author, presented side by side as a diptych. Warhol had a well documented fascination with Capote, calling his first solo exhibition Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote, 1952. After decades of unrequited admiration, their paths began to cross more frequently, and eventually, Warhol famously traded a year’s worth of columns in his magazine, Interview, for a portrait of the author. Capote was well-known after the publication of his novella Breakfast at Tifany’s (1958), but only after In Cold Blood (1966) did he achieve any sort of celebrity. In that same year, he began hosting the now-legendary Black and White ball at New York’s Plaza hotel, and developed a jet-set social life. In Truman Capote, Warhol has photographed Capote in a jaunty wide-brimmed hat, the central focus of each canvas. These are identical compositions; only the colour of the hat stands out: Warhol has inked one in blue and the other in yellow, suggesting a dual essence to Capote. Warhol’s extensive series of portraits draws on and encapsulates many of the themes that so fascinated the artist throughout his career: consumerism, celebrity, and social status, among others. For each of portrait, Warhol took countless Polaroids, doing his best to ensure that each sitter looked both fascinating and desirable. Indeed, he understood the potential power of images, and that photography could be both a ‘factual recording of reality and the romantic projection of magic and makebelief’ (T. Shafrazi, Andy Warhol Portraits, London, 2007, p. 16). From the myriad Polaroids taken, an image was selected, a negative was created which was then transferred onto a silkscreen. Along with an assistant, Warhol would squeegee ink through the screen, often conducting colour tests to ensure the ink registered. As art historian Robert Rosenblum wrote, ‘It was Warhol’s masterstroke to realize that the best method of electrifying the old-master portrait tradition with sufficient energy to absorb the real, living world was, now that we see it in retrospect, painfully obvious. The most commonplace source of visual information about our famous contemporaries is, after all, the photographic image, whether it comes from the pages of the Daily News or Vogue’ (R. Rosenblum, ‘Andy Warhol: Court Painter to the 70s’, Andy Warhol Portraits, London, 1993, pp. 140-141). Warhol has been credited with resurrecting the grand-style portraiture once seen in royal courts, and his glittery portraits of the decade sharply contrast with more austere screen-prints of the 1960s. Certainly, by 1979, he was well-installed within the celebrity world. His sitters included Mick Jagger, Liza Minelli, and Diane von Furstenberg, among others, his portraits a fusion of high-fashion photograph and paparazzi snapshot. As with so much of Warhol’s work, these portraits meditate on the surface image, and like the snapshot, they can only ever be so revealing. Despite his outward gaze, Capote is inscrutable, flattened by the silk-screen and the flash of the camera, cerebral, mysterious, and impossibly individual.