Mao (Mao) - Andy Warhol

Mao (Mao) - Andy Warhol
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Serigrafia - 91x91 - 1972

“If Warhol can be regarded as an artist of strategy, his choice of Mao as a subject - as the ultimate star - was brilliant. The image of Mao taken from the portrait photograph reproduced in the Chairman's so-called Little Red Book, is probably the one recognised by more of the earth's population than any other - a ready-made icon representing absolute political and cultural power. In Warhol's hands, this image could be considered ominously and universally threatening, or a parody or both.”
Warhol’s portraits of Chairman Mao are undeniably among the most historically potent, culturally significant, and iconic works of the twentieth century. Fixing the observer with a gaze that is both utterly penetrating and totally elusive, Warhol’s universally recognisable portraits of Mao command our full attention with a provocative bravura that rivals that of his quintessential Pop images of Campbell’s Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe.
Following the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the People’s Republic of China renewed relations with the United States by inviting the American table tennis team to the country in 1971. The following year President Nixon made the historic “ice-breaking” visit to the communist nation during what he termed “the week that changed the world”, which amounted to a proliferation of unfamiliar images in the American newspapers. As Warhol remarked in 1972:
"I've been reading so much about China. They're so nutty. They don't believe in creativity. The only picture they have is Mao Zedong. It's great. It looks like a silkscreen."
A couple of months later, the artist created the ten screenprints based on the official portrait of the Chinese communist leader; the image was originally illustrated on the cover of the widely circulated 1966 publication Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, also known as the Little Red Book. With an estimated print run of over 2.2 billion, the book was disseminated to classrooms, government officials and public spaces throughout China and the image of Mao was copied endlessly.
Warhol’s enduring fascination with fame and celebrity urged him to choose Mao as a subject. American writer Bob Colacello, who worked alongside Warhol for twelve years at Interview magazine, later remarked:
“It began with an idea from Bruno Bischofberger… Bruno’s idea was that Andy should paint the most important figure of the twentieth century”. Originally, Bischofberger suggested Albert Einstein because of his acclaimed Theory of Relativity; however for Warhol, fame was more important: “That’s a good idea but I was just reading in Life magazine that the most famous person in the world today is Chairman Mao. Shouldn’t it be the most famous person, Bruno?”
The Mao portrait is famous not because of its quality, or its depth of character, but because of its ubiquity. More than the individual, it was the mechanism of fame that fascinated Warhol, the degree to which celebrity consumes creativity by repeating one and the same image to a point of banality.
In the portrait, unlike other Soviet Leaders, Mao does not look off to the side, seemingly engrossed in a revolutionary scheme; instead he stares straight into the eyes of the viewer. He can thus be compared to the subjects in imperial portraiture and he emerges with the same god-like status. However, in Warhol’s version, Mao is presented with as much glamour as Marilyn; he is almost in drag. With luscious lips, highlighted cheeks and shadowed lids, Warhol undermines the imperious gravitas, transforming him into an innocuous celebrity pop star. Even Mao’s mole under his lips takes on an appearance of a Marilynesque beauty spot.
By using a system of repetition, yet with each work possessing individual schemes of vivid Pop colours, Warhol places himself in a position of ultimate authority over Mao’s depiction; he subverts the careful curation of Mao’s pictorial portrayal, evoking a style that is entirely at odds with the firm dictatorial presence the portrait was intended to convey.
The mass effect of repetition and slight variation, which Kirk Varnedoe called the “the array”, is precisely what that one can revel in when viewing the complete portfolio of Mao. Though each portfolio of ten was published as a single work of art, they have frequently been disassembled over the years. Here, much more effectively than the individual works are able, the group imposes itself on the viewer who must take in its uniformity and variety simultaneously.
Decades after its inception, Varnedoe endeavoured to capture the experience of looking at and thinking about “the array”: it is a “pleasure of exacerbated and lingering uncertainties… No summation or paraphrase anyone will ever write of it, nor any theoretical web to be spun around it, is ever even remotely likely to be anything like the panoply of things it effortlessly is all at once: hot, cold, heartless, funny, lively, boring, sad, outrageous, economical, memorable, vicious, stupid, sophisticated, crass and more”.
The set of ten screenprints, through their multiplicity, enable a duality of interpretations. While Warhol’s Marilyn sought to expose the power of the mass media in simultaneously idolising and commodifying popstars, this set of portraits exposes the potency of the Chinese propaganda machine to apotheosize a powerful political persona. Here, Warhol uncovered the shared goals of both societal models: the power of the capitalist free market driven by press and advertising, and its direct antithesis, the communist model that sought absolute political and cultural control by the same means. This is Warhol at his very best: controversial and witty, showcasing the contradiction between infamy and celebrity, complicity and criticism, and the paradoxical levels of reality and superficiality in our culture.
In total, Warhol executed an ambitious 199 Mao paintings in five set scales across five individual series between 1972-73. Usually the unique work came first, with the prints to follow. Significantly the present Mao portfolio was conceived initially in the edition form.
Nota do blog: Série com 10 serigrafias de Mao.