By Michele Leight

The Post-War & Contemporary Art evening auction at Christie's November 15, 2006 was extraordinary, setting a record for such an auction and many artist's records.

Hard on the heels of their record-breaking Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale of the prior week, it was a spectacular night for Post War and Contemporary Art - and artists - at Christies with Willem de Kooning's "XXV" (1997) selling to a Manhattan dealer, Nicholas Maclean, for $27.1 million, setting a world record for a contemporary artwork and a rare and sublime crimson abstraction by Clyfford Still, "1947-R-No.1," garnering $21.2 million, far exceeding its pre-sale estimate of $ 7 million. Both prices set records for the artist.

Not to be outdone on this amazing night in art auction history, 8 works by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) collectively reeled in a staggering $60 million, almost a quarter of the total sale, led by the chairman, "Mao," synthetic polymer and silkscreen inks on canvas, 82 by 61 inches, from the Swiss-based Daros Collection, which sold for $17.3 million to Mr. Joseph Lau of Hong Kong, setting a world record for the artist by $20,000.

The dynamic team of specialists, justifiably euphoric by the result of the sale, were lead by Amy Cappellazzo and Brett Gorvy, International Co-Heads of the Post-War and Contemporary Art department, Laura Paulson, Senior International Director, and Robert Manley, Head of the prestigious Evening Sale.

"Several of the most renowned private collectors of Post War and Contemporary Art have contributed to this sale which is the most valuable in its field to date," said Mr. Manley. "The excellent prices Christie's has achieved over the past years in the Post-War and Contemporary Art collecting area have fueled collections even more and assembled by our international team, this sale will be received by an equally international audience."

The sale total for the entire auction (see The City Review article) was $239.7 million surpassing Christie's record of $175 million in May, 2005 and the total of this sale and the Impressionist sale at Christie's was $866,356,000, shaking off any concerns that the art market may have peaked and forcing sellers, dealers, curators and collectors to reevaluate their holdings and ambitions. The Christie's sale outsold by a great margin Sotheby's more modest $125.1 million evening sale on Tuesday November 14, where the Warhols also fetched high prices.

"Orange Marilyn" painted in 1962 right after her death sold for a whopping $16,256,000, given its dimunitive size of 20 by 16 inches, and historic "Sixteen Jackies" (80 x 64 in) was bought by Richard Gray Galleries for $15,696,000. All eight Warhols did exceptionally well, led by these three world class paintings - but one has to hand it to "Orange Marilyn," oozing star power and packing a mighty punch per million relative to canvas size at this amazing sale.

The other five Warhols included in the Christies sale were: "Tomato Ketchup" ($1,024,000), "Judith Green" ($2,144,000), "Flowers" ($2,256,000), "Rorschasch" ($3,376,000), and "Portrait of Johan Wolfgang von Goethe" ($1,584,000), each work displaying various facets of his genius.

It is typical of Pop Art and Warhol that the subjects featured in this sale were the most famous Mrs. President in history, a legendary female Hollywood star who reputedly had an affair with the same president - and sang a widely publicized happy birthday song to him in a revealing glittery dress in front of millions of television viewers - and the Communist leader of a hugely populated country where such behavior in women, and most men, would not be tolerated. Warhol was a master at building suspense, a skill he learned as a filmmaker.

A photo of a stunning movie star in the daily newspapers lent a little glamour to the monotony and repetitiveness of everyday existence - and in those days movie stars were really glamorous. The idea of the screen goddess also had religious connotations for Warhol, who was a Catholic, and he made the connection in his portrayal of Hollywood's leading ladies, like Marilyn, whose aura reflected the larger than life awe induced by religious paintings, which Warhol saw in church as a boy. His screen goddess imagery also conveyed the fragility of beauty and fame, and the double edged sword of success.

Warhol's stunning "Orange Marilyn" is an invention of the Hollywood studio machine, a media product, gorgeously packaged and sold to the public like any other commodity. Warhol recognized that the "dumb blonde," pin-up girl, sex symbol Marilyn was exploited by a system that profited off her as much as it propelled her to stardom. They both gained from it; certainly Marilyn was rescued from obscurity and made world-famous by Hollywood and the media, but she was as much a cog in a gigantic machine as a Campbell's soup can - of course, infinitely more gorgeous. Without resorting to sentiment, Warhol captured the lonely, movie-star life lived in a fishbowl and the price Marilyn paid for fame.

"Orange Marilyn" was painted right after the legendary star's death in 1962, and belongs to a set of twelve single Marilyns celebrating this goddess of the silver screen. The first owners of "Orange Marilyn" were the legendary art dealers and collectors Mr. and Mrs. Leo Castelli, who lent it to the international Warhol retrospective in 1970-71. Warhol historicized Hollywood and popular culture in art, according everyday objects and the dazzling superstars of the world's greatest meritocracy the status that had previously been reserved for heads of state and commerce, presidents and royals. Norma Jean Baker- re-invented as Marilyn - and other self-made stars of stage and screen made it into the art history books via Warhol's Pop Art.

Echoing the dignified First Lady in "Sixteen Jackies," Hollywood's golden-haired goddess in "Orange Marilyn" puts a brave face on pain. Their dual connection to John F. Kennedy only increased the drama and suspense as both icons were offered at the same prestigious evening art auction at Christie's.

Warhol's choice of, and obsession with, female stars and power wives as subjects for his paintings was not mere happenstance. Marilyn Monroe's vulnerability stems from the fact that she never conceded her femininity, and Warhol was drawn to the contradictions of her public and private persona, recognizing that her "behind-the-screen" existence brought her no joy. Beautiful and imperfect, she constantly struggled with emotional instability inherited from her mother, and craved the love she never received as a child and which eluded her in life and in her marriages. She knew she was being exploited but she went along with it, and, sweetly defiant, even raised the voltage on her sex appeal with oodles of sensuous red lipstick, platinum blonde hair, curvaceous gowns and gravity-defying stillettos.

Marilyn was no dumb blonde. She loved to read and listen to music, and books and records were her favorite possessions - but this was not the image Hollywood wanted to project on screen. One of her husbands was Arthur Miller, another was Joe Dimaggio, both towering American male icons in their own right. And there was that legendary affair with the President. The circumstances of her death remain mysterious, even though the official verdict was suicide from an overdose of sleeping pills. Some believe there were fears in high places that she was getting too close to the most powerful leader in the world - Jackie's husband - and the initial newpaper headlines made no secret of the fact that the cause of her death was "undetermined." If Marilyn was murdered, it has not been proved to this day, but the mystery and the myths persist.

This lifestory could only be American - and Marilyn will not be forgotten. Warhol captures her golden aura - culled from an ordinary American girl - and the fleeting nature of fame and female beauty in "Orange Marilyn."

Warhol's post-assasssination "Sixteen Jackies," painted in 1964, is both a portrait and a modern history painting,focusing intensely on her as one of the most admired women of her time, and probably in history. The veiled, newly widowed and dignified Jackie struggling to stay on track with her two young children after being struck down by a disaster is unforgettable. Long before her husband's untimely death, there were problems in Camelot, but her desolation at his loss was palpable at the funeral, reflecting the nation's overwhelming grief, captured in this reverent Warhol.

Like the rest of the world, Warhol watched, mesmerized, as the pedigreed girl married the most powerful male of the free world, the President of the United States, had two beautiful children with him, lived what seemed like a dream life, and then gradually the image grew darker as that dream crumbled with her husband's horrific assassination - in full view of TV cameras that beamed his death across America and world. I was a very young girl living in the East at the time, our neighbors were Americans in the foreign service and they brought us the news. I remember the expression on their faces to this day. Kennedy's death was regarded as an international tragedy - everyone was impacted by it, regardless of race, or nationality.

Jackie Kennedy is linked forever in history to this tragic event because she was seated right beside her husband in the convertible, only inches away from the sniper's bullet. Like a horrible end to a wonderful movie, all the world watched as this beautiful woman cradled her husband's lifeless head in her lap till she was driven to safety, wearing her beautiful pink Chanel suit and dainty pillbox hat.

Both personas trigger emotions and memories in "Sixteen Jackies," rendered in appropriately sombre blue/black colors by the artist. The woman behind her black veil is as unforgettable as the glowing, regal beauty on the arm of her handsome young husband at presidential galas and balls - the fairytale princess Jackie, who dined with heads of state, conversed easily in several languages, rode on elephants in India and sailed off Hyannis Port with her husband and children. Jackie took us all on a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, and her elegance and dignity endured till the end. (See The City Review article on a 2001 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition on Jackie.)

Warhol succeeded in capturing the fragility of power in his portraits of Jackie, and how women and trophy wives sometimes get caught up in the power struggles of politics, ambition and fame. It is worth remembering that when these paintings were made, women had barely taken their aprons off and were only just beginning to enter the workforce. However, Jackie changed all that with her flawless elegance, designer clothes and charm, influencing millions of women across the world. Jackie was no ordinary woman, and Warhol knew that. That's why he painted her.

The press preview of Jackie Kennedy's retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the most crowded I have ever attended - jammed with press from all corners of the globe scrambling to interview curators and take their pictures. During the week the show opened, the lines backed up through the museum to the front steps of the museum - and those were for people who had bought advance tickets.The lines continued for months. Only King Tutankamun's show had received as much public recognition.

Warhol brought Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy Onassiss and Mao down to a human scale, closer, simultaneously mythologizing them. It is a historic event when three icons come up for sale in one evening.

"Mao" was one of a series of ten paintings, inspired by Warhol's visit to China and the historic easing of relations with the United States after President Nixon's visit in 1972. This version is widely considered by experts to be his best. The Daros Collection, based in Zurich, Switzerland, owns one of the greatest holdings of Warhol paintings in private hands. The mission of the Daros Collection has been to focus on small groups of artists and to acquire them in depth. Their holdings of Warhols from the 1960s include seminal works like "210 Coke Bottles," (1962), "Blue Liz as Cleopatra," (1963), and "Atomic Bomb," (1964).

Creating his "Mao" series in 1971, when China renewed relations with the United States, Warhol said:

"Since fashion is art now and Chinese is in fashion, I could make a lot of money." He would have been ecstatic at this auction. From the vantage point of 2006, Warhol sounds almost prophetic in his advance notice of China's ascendance in the global arena.

The atmosphere in the auction room was exhilarating and focused as buyers vied for their favorite artworks. Christopher Burge, always elegant, maintained an energetic pace, and, as always, did not hesitate to inject humor when the occasion demanded it. This was greatly appreciated during a long sale encompassing 83 lots, with only nine that did not sell. The bidding on the Warhols reflected the quality of the works on offer, and it was amusing to note the essentially democratic, capitalist audience enthusiastically applauding the record price for Warhol's seminal "Mao," former legendary head of a Communist state. "Mao" should feel threatening, but Warhol's interpretation owes more to pop-idolatry as he re-invents the normally somber, omnipresent Communist leader as a Pop icon engulfed in happy swirling colors and virtuoso brushwork. Spending millions on art should always be this much fun.

Warhol distrusted perfection. Despite their fame, Jackie and Marilyn were no strangers to tragedy or pain, and Mao's vision of China was realized through mandated conformity and the suppresion of individual freedoms.There could be no more opposing ideologies than Mao's and America's, but Warhol understood the attraction of opposites, and took a chance that money-loving capitalists would find the autocratic leader of the Peoples Republic of China fascinating, even if they disagreed with the tenets of Communism.

The image of Mao used by Warhol in this painting - a state-controlled deity crossed with benign Big Brother - is taken straight out of The Little Red Book which all Chinese citizens carried on their persons like a pocket bible, and which he skillfully propagated around the world. But Warhol's Mao is softer, more human, anointed with the free-flowing brushstrokes of an American artist whose real-life persona and art might have been snuffed out without a second thought in Mao's China. Warhol transfers power to himself. The totalitarian leader known to millions across the globe through his own skillfull self-promotion is turned into a pop icon by a radical American artist.

"Mao," painted in 1972, marked Warhol's return to fine art following his official "retirement" in 1965 to pursue his interest in film. He survived a near-fatal shooting in 1968, which re-directed him to his earlier pursuit of painting, a turning point for him personally and artistically, and undoubtedly the reason for his focus on the death and disaster series for which he is famous. His own near-death experience made him re-direct his course, and confront his own mortality.

With his critically acclaimed "Mao" series, Warhol injected a shot of alien Communist consciousness into mainstream America at a time when such imagery was totally absent. Today, we can see into all corners of the world via technology and media, but back then this was radical and avant garde. Both men were revolutionaries, and Warhol also painted other Cold War symbols like hammers, sickles and Lenin - but it was Mao that proved to be of enormous importance to Warhol's own place in art history.

Master of "multiples," Warhols "Pop Art" paintings are now fetching price tags usually reserved for unique artworks - or to put it bluntly, one-offs. It is not often that a painting that sells in the multi-millions has several - almost - exact replicas, and no one would have appreciated this more than Warhol himself. Unabashedly populist and deliciously subversive, Warhol had his finger on the pulse of public consciousness and never condescended to popular taste - he embraced it wholeheartedly.

Whether it's the flowers, Elvis or a brillo box, Andy Warhol's high octane, fabulous, uber-American Pop Art imagery is instantly recognizable and resonates across the globe today. It is hard to imagine a time when there were no Campbell soupcans, or Liz and Jackie heads in psychedelic color combinations adorning the walls of the world's most famous art museums or art books. His unapologetically mundane - now iconic - Coke bottles and soupcans made art accessible to everyone, mimicing production lines, advertising and mass merchandising. Well-versed in the hypnotic power of film, and a successful commercial illustrator, Warhol knew how to create drama. Flagrantly populist, he did not hesitate to put the supermarket on stage.

Fun counts, and Warhol's paintings are a lot of fun - even "Mao" mellows under his brushwork, exuding wall power without intimidating the viewer. His show-stopping Pop Art graphic style mirrored the euphoric 60s, a world suddenly made visible to millions of Americans via magazine and television advertizing, and a corresponding rise in consumer-mass culture as consumer goods became more affordable. The 60s also spawned a new generation of investors that had made vast or small fortunes and were drawn to investing in art as well as blue chip stocks that were lifeless beyond rows of numbers in portfolios. These savvy, confident newcomers were looking for exciting art that reflected their world - popular culture - and they found it in Warhol.

Ingeniously packaging paintings in his signature synthetic polymer and silk-screen ink on canvas format, (often unframed), Warhol removed art from the enshrined easel paintings of the past and delivered his deliberately commercialized art "product" to whoever was interested in it with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude that belied his brilliance. He dished out art like soup, happily called himself a machine (for making art), and his second art studio on 47th Street in New York City was unceremoniously dubbed the "Factory." Unconventional and wacky as this approach seemed at the time, the world soon took Andy Warhol seriously.

A commercial illustrator prior to becoming a painter, Warhol understood the allure of packaging, the tingle of excitement and the momentary magic it provides, and also how ephemeral and superficial it is once it has been discarded and the product attained - and loses its allure. He playfully showed us how we willingly submit to being manipulated as long as it gives us a "buzz." Intuitively grasping the significance of mass production, he surfed on its wave.

Warhol worked in multiples of everything. His art "Factory" reflected the mass production ethos of the world around him, spinning off reproductions and replicas of originals in a dizzying production line guided by him and manned by many assistants - once again echoing films, which cannot be created alone. Those were still the final days of the Hollywood film studios, where A and B movies were churned out like butter for the consumption of the masses. Stars like Elvis, Liz and Marilyn were "under contract" to make a series of films, and were not released until they had fulfilled them.

Andy Warhol had to be aware of the potentially hazardous underpinnings of consumer culture - brilliantly portrayed in Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times" - but he did not hold a position either way, celebrating ordinary subjects as extraordinary in his art because he recognized the inevitability of feeding a gluttonous demand simply because it was possible to do so and affordable for the first time in history.

Warhol grew up poor, the only art he saw as a boy was at his local Catholic Church. The sudden availability of consumer goods in his youth after the Depression must have seemed like manna from heaven, and reflects what is happening in an exploding middle class in China and India today. Fashion, cars, comics, magazines and records, and a wide variety of labor-saving devices, were available to the masses for the first time - which was liberating and exciting. At the same time Warhol was an "artist," which made the art world and the general public initially doubt his motive for making art. This contradiction is not an issue today, but in the 60s it was revolutionary.

Warhol's intuition led him to another obsession of popular mass culture that was ahead of its time - celebrities and their lifestyle. In the midst of common everyday artifacts like Brillo boxes and soup cans he portrayed the rich, the famous, the leader of a Communist state, the high brow and low brow, presidents, their wives, and that timeless symbol of the American Dream - the movie star. He gave them equal attention on canvas. His reference points were the touchstones of the masses as they went about their daily business: TV, magazines, advertising, photographs, newspapers and films.

Warhol's radically depicted pop-leader and rags-to-riches movie stars ignite fantasies because there is an alluring sense of possibility in the notion of re-inventing the self. Imbedded in celluloid dreams and bubble-bath fantasies is the irresistible attraction of making a fortune through one's own talent, hard work and imagination, ideas that could only have taken root in America, where such dreams are the birthright of all citizens. Warhol translated the unique American phenomenon of re-invention of the self into art.

Like the magnificent Mustangs and T-Birds of the 1950s, Warhol's glittering imagery could only be American, even though his ideas have since been widely copied in everything from fashion merchandising and advertising to the packaging of consumer products across the globe. His debt to illustration and film is palpable, and the most ordinary Warhol objects ooze star power, even if the "star" is a only a Coke bottle.

There is the element of chance and magic in film that has a deep allure for all of us, and Warhol captured the universal craving for glamor and glitz in his art, giving the public what they wanted. Like most of us, he fell under the magnetic spell of movies, and his series of "multiples" - Jackies, flowers, brillo boxes - mimic the frame by frame sequencing that filmmaking requires. These repetitions and multiples recur as a constant backdrop in our daily lives. Warhol turned everyday artifacts into art, placing consumer products and popular culture on the altar of high art alongside Van Gogh, Monet, or Picasso.

Known for his extreme New York lifestyle and wild partying that were a vital part of his art-making and inspiration, Warhol was open about his sexual orientation at a time when it was extremely courageous to do so - he was gay. There were those who disparaged him for it, but they are forgotten in the cobwebs of the past and Andy Warhol is immortal. Warhol could be really serious as well. His fluorescent electric chair silkscreen images - also part of the death and disaster series - are even more sinister than the banal wood and metal structures that ended lives in many states across America till fairly recently. His bright colors made these brutal objects even more barbaric, which they were.

The subliminal impact of art is unknowable; great art changes the way people think before they even realize it, and that shift in gears results in greater awareness or at the very least a re-thinking of stodgy old perceptions. Warhol was like a meteor in the churning firmament of the exuberant sixties, and he captured his era and Pop Art culture to lasting effect, as the Christie's sale confirms.

Warhol loved parties and not everyone at the parties was as world-famous as Mao, Marilyn and Jackie. His wonderful four-part portrait of Judith Green shows a lighter side of Warhol, almost an innocent wonder at the joy of mirthfulness.

The catalogue provides the following commentary about this work:

"Few portraits evoke so vividly the essence of an era as Andy Warhol's Judith Green. Dynamic, spontaneous, self-confident and sexy, the painting is a declaration of the promise and possibilities of New York City in the early 1960s, where the young, the beautiful and the talented could be anything they wanted to be and thereby they made their own history. With it, Andy Warhol created not only a fabulous time-capsule but also contributed a crucial development to Twentieth Century Art, utilizing the public photo-booth and multiple silk-screened panels to devise what has been described as the most original formal innovation in portraiture since Picasso's Cubist portraits of 1910.....More and more people were attracted to his studio as a Mecca for the hippest and most radical experimentation. There were pioneers in music poetry, in art, in drug use and abuse, in sexual freedom. This was the furnace that forged Pop. There were drifters and celebritites, fellow artists, and drag queens. The Silver Factory, as his studio at 221 East 47th Street became known, had a constant carnival atmosphere. Yet it was also constantly creative. Pictures, movies, photographs, poems and music were being put together one way or another in the various parts of the large silver painted space. It seemed natural that Warhol would soon be asked to paint portraits of those in his immediate circle....Warhol's new portraits could not be simply culled 'ready-made' from the flotsam of popular culture. So, in order to retain a Warhol look, "a machine' look, a Pop look, Warhol turned to the mundane photomat, perfectly blending the lowest and most common art form with the highest art aspirations....Warhol's earlier democratic salvaging of themes and subjects from popular culture now evolved in order to present people who were not yet icons- who were not instantly recognizable - with a documenary sense and glamorous sheen that implies that we should recognize them. These were the newly annointed Superstars wth their designated 15 minutes of fame....'The pscyhological structure of the photobooth resembles that of the Catholic confessional, translated into the profane environment of the railway terminal, the street, or the passport office....' (Mark Francis, 'Still-Life: Andy Warhol's Photography as a form of Metaphysics," Andy Warhol: Photography, exh. cat. Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Germany, 1999, p. 20)....Judy Green was a smart, vivacious and vital author, who typfied both in her attitude and her stunning looks the stylishly cool, independent new woman of the early 1960s....Both Judith Heiman, she had achieved success with her 1961 bestseller The Young Marrieds, which was a thoroughly racy critique of the 1950s stereotype of young married life....Like Warhol, she was both a chronicler and a front-line participant of a precise era in New York City life. She was the elegant poster-child for the new generation of self-determined career girl - not so much a feminist as proudly feminine....A few months after Warhol made her portrait, Judith Heiman met and married William J. Green an affluent business executive more than twenty years her senior. She was suddenly pulled away from the creative center of Warhol's Factory Her husband's close friends included Frank Sinatra and members of the Hollywood elite such as Gregory Peck, and Warhol's subculture did not sit well with this new circle. Warhol would later attend Judy Green's famous cocktail and Christmas parties in the 1970s and 80s, but by that stage he too was a member of Ne wYork's social sstablishment."

Like other great artists of the past, Warhol challenged the status quo with imagery that landed like mortar shells on mass consciousness, which is exactly what great artists are supposed to do, and he relished every minute of it. Warhol's intuitive artistic radar connected with the guy or gal next door, middle America, high-brow or low-brow, the wealthy collector or the museum benefactor. He did not play favorites and was not shy to cash in on his talent. He worked as prolifically in his artmaking "factory" as any production line, although his was significantly more glamorous given the context of his fame and the location of his studio in the most exciting city in the world.

If Warhol could have re-scripted his sudden, untimely death, he would have. After routine gall bladder surgery he developed an allergic reaction to an antibiotic and died; he was 58 years old. His memorial service was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral, attended by the power elite of fashion, art and society.

The impact of Warhol is all around us today, his influence immeasurable. He helped revolutionize the concept of "art" by taking it off its pedestal, making it more accessible to all. And he had a jolly good time most of the time and would have loved, absolutely loved, his own performance at this auction