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For Andy Warhol, the most influential of the Pop
artists, the direct application of pigment to canvas was outmoded and
limiting. Early in his career, he began to utilize the silkscreen process
to transfer photographed images to canvas. Warhol used this process
throughout the 1960s to reproduce multiple portraits of celebrities,
including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Jacqueline Kennedy. At
the same time, he duplicated images of mass-produced commercial products,
such as Campbell's soup cans and Brillo boxes, suggesting that the media
marketed celebrities just like products.
Mao is one of a series of silkscreened portraits
of the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976) that Warhol produced
in 1973. Nearly 15 feet tall, this towering image mirrors representations
that were displayed throughout China
during and after the Cultural
Revolution (1966-76). Warhol was undoubtedly drawn to this subject
because of the media’s attention to the opening of diplomatic relations
with the People's Republic of China in the early 1970s. His irreverent
attitude toward China’s totalitarian
propaganda is apparent on
the surface of the painting. Flamboyant brushstrokes compete with the
photographic image, forming color splashes on Mao’s clothing. Red
rouge and blue eye shadow resemble graffiti.
These details can be interpreted as commentary on the resemblance of
Communist propaganda to capitalist advertising media.
Originally a British movement of the late 1950s,
Pop Art interpreted images from consumer culture with black humor, irony,
and criticism. In its American form, Pop Art presented less harsh images,
adapting sources such as comic strips, commercial products, and publicity
photos. This deliberate departure from the gestural
style of Abstract Expressionism
shocked the art world in the early 1960s.
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Exhibition view, Mao
Wallpaper, Andy Warhol, Musée Galliera, Paris, 1974
Photograph by Jacqueline Hyde
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The Art Institute’s Mao was first exhibited
in Paris in 1974 with three other
15-foot canvases and many other, smaller Mao paintings. The gallery
walls were covered with Mao Wallpaper, specially designed for
the installation.
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