Andy Warhol’s Sixteen Jackies (left) and Round Jackie (right)
Last week’s Modern and Impressionist auctions in New York were deemed successful but unexciting, so all eyes are on this week’s sales, which focus on the mercurial realm of contemporary art, to see if they can provide a bit more pop. And who is poppier than Andy Warhol?
At the Sotheby’s sale on Tuesday evening, a high-estimate Warhol from 1964, Sixteen Jackies, departs from his more iconic single-image repetitions, featuring a mixed composition of several Jacqueline Kennedy portraits in blue, brown, and white. Painted in 1964 at the heart of Andy Warhol’s most historic period, Sixteen Jackies is a complex and extraordinarily rare declaration of the twin pedestals on which Warhol’s artistic genius rest: ubiquitous public icons and serial imagery.
This object is a derivative of his Multiple Jackies that began with his The Week That Was series from 1963: various combinations of eight images taken of Jackie over the course of the week that her husband was killed.
The painting touted to sell at $30 million.