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拍品專文
On November 22, 1963, amidst the clamor and chaos of Grand Central Station, Andy Warhol paused as news of President John F. Kennedy's assassination reverberated throughout the terminal. Absorbing the gravity of the moment, he turned to his assistant and glibly remarked, "Well… let's get to work" (A. Warhol, quoted in C. Brown, Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings, 2012, pg. 29). In subsequent months, Warhol fixated incessantly on the extensive media coverage of the tragedy, obsessively collecting widely circulated images from magazines and newspapers. His collection of pictures was monumental, spanning from Life magazine cut outs of the couple's joyful arrival at Dallas Love Field to mournful scenes of the funeral procession that soon followed in the nation's capital. Amidst this torrent of imagery, Jackie Kennedy's captivating expressions stood out to Warhol, inspiring him to create the famed series of silkscreen prints that isolate and magnify the first lady in various stages of happiness and grief.
Of the eight different photographs that Warhol selected for the Jackie series, only two of them depict a smiling, youthful Jackie. The others are taken from photographs of a stunned and somber woman aboard Air Force One as Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president, and then at the funeral of John F. Kennedy three days later. In the present work, Warhol immortalizes the moment before the president’s death on that chilly autumn afternoon in Dallas, Texas. Clad in her fashionable pink Chanel suit and coordinating pillbox hat, with her hair slightly tousled by the wind, Jackie is caught in a frozen smile as she arrives with the president. This Jackie offers a fading glimpse of joy that serves as a poignant reminder of the innocence lost—a moment in time frozen just before personal and national tragedy would irrevocably alter her life and the nation's history.
Cropped from an Associated Press photograph taken as the Kennedys departed Love Field, the composition focuses on Jackie Kennedy's beaming smile, boldly set against a unmodulated expanse of Prussian blue. Warhol's use of the silkscreen technique introduces a deliberate smoothness to the image, stripping away gradations of shading and depth while saturating the canvas in deep blue. This flattening effect transforms Jackie from a three-dimensional figure into a symbolic representation of the nation's collective grief: a flash of happiness poisoned by the looming fate of the half-obscured figure of John F. Kennedy cropped at the edge of the composition. The contrast between her smile and her husband’s spectral presence deepens the sense of impending doom, amplifying the weight of her joy moments before it is shattered and broadcast to millions.
“When President Kennedy was shot that fall, I heard the news over the radio while I was alone painting in my studio... I’d been thrilled having Kennedy as president; he was handsome, young, smart—but it didn’t bother me that much that he was dead,” Warhol had famously remarked after the president’s death. But his callous comment stemmed from the media’s handling of the event. Their constant barrage of photographs and video were essentially repeated in a 24-hour loop. The same few images were run over and over in a mind-numbing succession. “What bothered me was the way the television and radios were programming everybody to feel so sad... It seemed like no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get away from the thing” (A. Warhol, quoted in P. Hackett, POPism: The Warhol ‘60s, New York, 1980, p. 60).
This convergence of personal loss and public fascination greatly intrigued Warhol. His obsession with pop culture and mass media was cultivated during the burgeoning Pop Art movement of the sixties—a movement that embraced consumerism and mass media as legitimate subjects of artistic expression. The pervasive influence of advertising and the rise of television provided fertile ground for his fascination with fame and consumer culture. He was particularly drawn to personalities like Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, who transcended their individual subjectivities to become iconic symbols of American pop culture, immortalized forever in mass media. By appropriating the existing imagery of these pop cultural icons, Warhol recontextualizes these ubiquitous images through his distinctive silkscreen technique, blurring the lines between high and low art and questioning the veracity of images themselves.
Both created in the aftermath of sudden, tragic deaths, Warhol’s silkscreens of Jackie and Marilyn have striking connections. Following Marilyn Monroe's tragic death by apparent suicide in 1962, Warhol embarked on his Marilyn series, paralleling the circumstances under which he would later create his Jackie series. In pieces like Gold Marilyn Monroe, he employs a gleaming gold background, directly referencing Byzantine iconography—where gold signifies the divine and eternal—to elevate Monroe to a quasi-sacred status. This deliberate nod to the tradition of religious icons, particularly the venerated female figures such as the Virgin Mary, aligns Warhol within a broader historical lineage of female representation. In his Jackie series, Warhol extends this exploration by transforming Jackie Kennedy into a modern-day Pietà—a mourning Madonna who personifies the nation's collective grief. Through these parallels, he captures the duality of his contemporary female icons: both Marilyn and Jackie are depicted smiling, yet their images are shadowed by underlying tragedy. This allows Warhol to delve into the nuances of celebrity, highlighting the unsettling realities that exist beyond the veneer of perfection.
Of the eight different photographs that Warhol selected for the Jackie series, only two of them depict a smiling, youthful Jackie. The others are taken from photographs of a stunned and somber woman aboard Air Force One as Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president, and then at the funeral of John F. Kennedy three days later. In the present work, Warhol immortalizes the moment before the president’s death on that chilly autumn afternoon in Dallas, Texas. Clad in her fashionable pink Chanel suit and coordinating pillbox hat, with her hair slightly tousled by the wind, Jackie is caught in a frozen smile as she arrives with the president. This Jackie offers a fading glimpse of joy that serves as a poignant reminder of the innocence lost—a moment in time frozen just before personal and national tragedy would irrevocably alter her life and the nation's history.
Cropped from an Associated Press photograph taken as the Kennedys departed Love Field, the composition focuses on Jackie Kennedy's beaming smile, boldly set against a unmodulated expanse of Prussian blue. Warhol's use of the silkscreen technique introduces a deliberate smoothness to the image, stripping away gradations of shading and depth while saturating the canvas in deep blue. This flattening effect transforms Jackie from a three-dimensional figure into a symbolic representation of the nation's collective grief: a flash of happiness poisoned by the looming fate of the half-obscured figure of John F. Kennedy cropped at the edge of the composition. The contrast between her smile and her husband’s spectral presence deepens the sense of impending doom, amplifying the weight of her joy moments before it is shattered and broadcast to millions.
“When President Kennedy was shot that fall, I heard the news over the radio while I was alone painting in my studio... I’d been thrilled having Kennedy as president; he was handsome, young, smart—but it didn’t bother me that much that he was dead,” Warhol had famously remarked after the president’s death. But his callous comment stemmed from the media’s handling of the event. Their constant barrage of photographs and video were essentially repeated in a 24-hour loop. The same few images were run over and over in a mind-numbing succession. “What bothered me was the way the television and radios were programming everybody to feel so sad... It seemed like no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get away from the thing” (A. Warhol, quoted in P. Hackett, POPism: The Warhol ‘60s, New York, 1980, p. 60).
This convergence of personal loss and public fascination greatly intrigued Warhol. His obsession with pop culture and mass media was cultivated during the burgeoning Pop Art movement of the sixties—a movement that embraced consumerism and mass media as legitimate subjects of artistic expression. The pervasive influence of advertising and the rise of television provided fertile ground for his fascination with fame and consumer culture. He was particularly drawn to personalities like Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, who transcended their individual subjectivities to become iconic symbols of American pop culture, immortalized forever in mass media. By appropriating the existing imagery of these pop cultural icons, Warhol recontextualizes these ubiquitous images through his distinctive silkscreen technique, blurring the lines between high and low art and questioning the veracity of images themselves.
Both created in the aftermath of sudden, tragic deaths, Warhol’s silkscreens of Jackie and Marilyn have striking connections. Following Marilyn Monroe's tragic death by apparent suicide in 1962, Warhol embarked on his Marilyn series, paralleling the circumstances under which he would later create his Jackie series. In pieces like Gold Marilyn Monroe, he employs a gleaming gold background, directly referencing Byzantine iconography—where gold signifies the divine and eternal—to elevate Monroe to a quasi-sacred status. This deliberate nod to the tradition of religious icons, particularly the venerated female figures such as the Virgin Mary, aligns Warhol within a broader historical lineage of female representation. In his Jackie series, Warhol extends this exploration by transforming Jackie Kennedy into a modern-day Pietà—a mourning Madonna who personifies the nation's collective grief. Through these parallels, he captures the duality of his contemporary female icons: both Marilyn and Jackie are depicted smiling, yet their images are shadowed by underlying tragedy. This allows Warhol to delve into the nuances of celebrity, highlighting the unsettling realities that exist beyond the veneer of perfection.