subject: Andy Warhol Silkscreen Could Fetch Up To $18,000 [print this page] In the 1950s, Van Heusen hired celebrities like Ronald Reagan, Charleton Heston and Mickey Rooney to promote the company's collar-attached shirts. "Won't wrinkle ... ever!" the ad featuring Reagan stated.
Thirty years later, after Reagan was elected president of the United States, the ad was the basis of a silkscreen by Andy Warhol (1928-1987), considered by many the most influential and controversial American artist of the second half of the 20th century.
"Van Heusen (Ronald Reagan)" was part of Warhol's "Ads" portfolio, whereby the artist rendered popular subjects such as commercial advertisements, corporate logos and celebrity portraits into art forms of their own. It was part of a body of work that continued Warhol's fascination with consumerism and pop culture.
"To his critics, he was the cynical magus of a movement that debased high art and reduced it to a commodity," Tony Scherman and David Dalton write in their book "Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol" (Harper, $40). "To his admirers, he was the most important artist since Picasso. Indisputably, Andy Warhol redefined what art could be. As the quintessential pop artist, he razed the barrier between high and low culture, taking as his subject matter comic books, tabloids, Hollywood publicity photos, and supermarket products."
Warhol's "Van Heusen (Ronald Reagan)", 185/190, is featured in Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries' modern and contemporary art auction, scheduled for Oct. 27, 2010, in Dallas. The signed 38-by-38-inch piece is estimated to fetch between $14,000 and $18,000.
When first exhibited in 1985, Washington Post art critic Jo Ann Lewis called "Van Heusen (Ronald Reagan)" "the most uncannily timely. ... Warhol reveals his wit and sense of irony in the way he has altered this and other images, though ever so slightly. In all of them, he caresses the image with his nervous line -- a classic part of the Warholizing process."
