Andy Warhol - Original Berlin Exhibition A1 Poster Double Elvis 1963
No. 91134057
Original poster published by the New National Gallery of Berlin (Germany) on the occasion of the event exhibition dedicated to Andy Warhol (United States, 1928-1987).
Poster with Warhol's work Double Elvis from 1963.
Dimensions: 84 x 59,5 cm. Brand new, still in the plastic foil. Never used. I ship worldwide in cardboard tube with tracking number.
A gleaming masterpiece that stands among the most iconic images of 20th century art, Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis [Ferus Type] faces us with visionary force. Elvis Presley, dressed as a gunslinger in a publicity shot for the 1960 Western movie Flaming Star, is doubled in black silkscreen upon a shimmering silver ground. He looms almost life-size, as if caught in a full-length mirror. The painting is at once striking, its six-foot star recognisable in a flash, and loaded with ambiguity. Warhol distills his famed serial production method into a succinct twinned image that reflects the overlapping nuances of celebrity, filmmaking, desire and performance in sixties America. Cropped slightly at the head, the two Elvises intersect at the knees, aligned in such a way that the left-hand figure appears to be holding both pistols. With our attention drawn to his pose and finely-tuned outfit, Presley as cowboy is the image of idealized American manhood wryly exposed as a costumed interloper. United with the silver canvas, he takes his place in a flat, empty surface that, for Warhol, functions as a looking glass. With subtle mastery, Warhol mirrors the cultural world of his time, both glorifying and destabilizing its glamorous, seductive fictions.
By 1962, having stunned the art world with his early paintings of Coke bottles, soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, Warhol had cemented his position as the king of Pop in New York. Created in the summer of 1963, the “Ferus Type” Elvises were conceived to conquer the West Coast. Warhol had already completed a group of initial “Studio Type” Elvises, whose half-tone backgrounds lent them a painterly sense of illusionistic space; for his upcoming show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood and the birthplace of the Western, he had something more dramatic in mind. With the help of his new assistant, the poet Gerard Malanga, he completed a new series whose composition would vividly embody the “silver screen” of cinema. Displaced from any sense of narrative or locale onto pure, shining surface, they became celluloid ciphers, highlighting the multiple artifice of Elvis’s performance.
Original poster published by the New National Gallery of Berlin (Germany) on the occasion of the event exhibition dedicated to Andy Warhol (United States, 1928-1987).
Poster with Warhol's work Double Elvis from 1963.
Dimensions: 84 x 59,5 cm. Brand new, still in the plastic foil. Never used. I ship worldwide in cardboard tube with tracking number.
A gleaming masterpiece that stands among the most iconic images of 20th century art, Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis [Ferus Type] faces us with visionary force. Elvis Presley, dressed as a gunslinger in a publicity shot for the 1960 Western movie Flaming Star, is doubled in black silkscreen upon a shimmering silver ground. He looms almost life-size, as if caught in a full-length mirror. The painting is at once striking, its six-foot star recognisable in a flash, and loaded with ambiguity. Warhol distills his famed serial production method into a succinct twinned image that reflects the overlapping nuances of celebrity, filmmaking, desire and performance in sixties America. Cropped slightly at the head, the two Elvises intersect at the knees, aligned in such a way that the left-hand figure appears to be holding both pistols. With our attention drawn to his pose and finely-tuned outfit, Presley as cowboy is the image of idealized American manhood wryly exposed as a costumed interloper. United with the silver canvas, he takes his place in a flat, empty surface that, for Warhol, functions as a looking glass. With subtle mastery, Warhol mirrors the cultural world of his time, both glorifying and destabilizing its glamorous, seductive fictions.
By 1962, having stunned the art world with his early paintings of Coke bottles, soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, Warhol had cemented his position as the king of Pop in New York. Created in the summer of 1963, the “Ferus Type” Elvises were conceived to conquer the West Coast. Warhol had already completed a group of initial “Studio Type” Elvises, whose half-tone backgrounds lent them a painterly sense of illusionistic space; for his upcoming show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood and the birthplace of the Western, he had something more dramatic in mind. With the help of his new assistant, the poet Gerard Malanga, he completed a new series whose composition would vividly embody the “silver screen” of cinema. Displaced from any sense of narrative or locale onto pure, shining surface, they became celluloid ciphers, highlighting the multiple artifice of Elvis’s performance.