Lot 21. Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), Jackie, 1964, signed and dated 1964 on the reverse, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, 50.7 by 40.7 cm. 20 by 16 in. Estimate 1,200,000 — 1,800,000 GBP. Lot sold 1,445,000 GBP. Photo Sotheby's.

Provenance: Fine Art Exchange, Palm Beach

Todd Brassner, New York

Lee B. Gordon, USA 

Christie’s, Los Angeles, 14 October 1998, Lot 52 

Jane Holzer, New York

Acquired from the above by the previous owner in 2013

Bibliography: Georg Frei and Neil Printz, Eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures, Volume 2A, 1964-1969, New York 2004, p. 164, no. 1023, illustrated in colour

Notes: Jackie is a compelling work of exceptional quality and clarity, completed with such a clean crisp screenprint that the viewer is not only drawn to Jackie’s exquisite visage, but also to the movie-star good looks of her husband, the legendary J.F.K. Where in most works from this series, the President is all but a blurry background to the beaming protagonist, in the present example, we can clearly make out his entire visage, from the gleam of his smile to the sharp side-parting in his hair. This work is rare, one of only two white works in this series of 34 Jackies that are based on this specific source-image. It is tribute to the efficacy of this corpus that seven of the works are held in prestigious museum collections – including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Thus, Jackie counts among the very best of these works to remain in private hands and should be considered as the pictorial pinnacle of theJackie motif, which is itself one of the most celebrated images of Andy Warhol’s iconic 1960s praxis. In its technical execution and clarity it delivers a masterclass in Warhol’s trademark screenprinting technique, while in its content, it can be identified as perhaps the most emotive portrait of the first lady by this artist. Unlike those images of Jackie at her husband’s funeral, in this work we understand the joy of her married life, and as such, better comprehend the poignancy of its abruptly curtailed conclusion.

John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy. Image: © Sipa Press/REX/Shutterstock

The source image for the present work is a photograph taken of John and Jackie Kennedy on the 22nd November 1963, the day that J.F.K. was assassinated. We join the couple at Dallas Love Field airport, in some of their final moments before beginning the limousine journey that would be interrupted by the most significant assassination of the Twentieth Century. The most striking aspect of this work is the beaming smiles that adorn the faces of both figures. The innocence of their happiness fills us with dread; their radiance suffuses the work with an inescapable mood of impending morbidity and portentous doom. In this context, we can understand this work as a modern day memento mori, a sense that is compounded by the stark black and white palette of the present work. Through comprehending the fate of these characters, we are reminded of the inevitability of our own demise.

Jackie Kennedy leaves the Capitol after JFK’s funeral, 1963.

The J.F.K. funeral was one of the first national events to be extensively covered by the American media; TV networks went live with wall-to-wall coverage and news editors documented every twist and turn. Jackie Kennedy became a symbol for mourning America. Her facial expressions were recapitulated in the media “to such an extent that no better historical monument on the exhibitionism of American emotional value is conceivable” (Rainer Crone, Andy Warhol, New York 1970, p. 29). This deft appropriation of a national icon is absolutely in keeping with Warhol’s most subversive style. Indeed, it is no surprise that when Warhol first painted Jackie in 1962, he used the same full-frontal movie-star format in which he had originally depicted Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. He treated Jackie just as he treated them, not as a true portrait subject, but rather as an icon; an image that had become entirely ubiquitous within the American media. Warhol intrinsically grasped the whimsical nature of celebrity; he understood that an identity that had been broadcast so pervasively through so many different channels ceased to be anything but an artificial construct. Thus, in the present work, Warhol transforms a photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy into the Jackie motif, not to commemorate or glorify her plight, but rather to appropriate that artificial construct. In this sense, Warhol treated celebrities in much the same manner that he treated soup cans: inimitable icons of a capitalist contemporary age that were immediately identifiable to the American populace and rife for reproduction in his distinctive brand of Pop.

Andy Warhol, Blue Jackie, 1964, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford. Image: © Allen Phillips / Wadsworth Atheneum Artwork: © 2016 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London.

Andy Warhol, Sixteen Jackies, 1964. Artwork: © 2016 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London