Mao x 10

I like this better than our culture. It’s simpler. I love all the blue clothes. Everyone wearing blue.

Warhol's Mao series was inspired by Bruno Bischofberger, Warhol’s dealer who wanted Warhol to go back to making portraits and suggested he creates portraits of the most important figures in the 20th century. At the time, in 1972, Nixon had just made his historic visit to China and Mao had been declared the most famous person in the world by Life magazine. 

Andy Warhol based his 10 screenprints that comprise the present work on Mao's official portrait, the very one that was on the cover of the (in)famous Little Red Book. 

Maoism's mass ideology and Mao's cult-time following could only attract Warhol. The series manages to show Warhol’s fascination with the clash of imagery between Communist propaganda and Western fashion kitsch. "The creation of a glammed up iconic image of Mao outwardly translates this powerful, mysterious and somewhat intimidating image of Communist propaganda into a glamorized 1970s ready-made pop icon, embodying absolute political and cultural power, reminiscent of Warhol’s celebrity portraiture."

When he finally made it to China in 1982, after Mao's death and Deng Xiaoping's "Open Door" economic policy, Warhol’s love of repetition and mass production rendered China somewhat of a wonderland for the artist.

“It was a Warholian experience. Here’s the guy that did the Campbell’s soup can – he was all about the multiplicity of things – and here was a whole lifestyle based on that idea.” Warhol concurred, reflecting at the time, “I like this better than our culture. It’s simpler. I love all the blue clothes. Everyone wearing blue. I like to wear the same thing every day.”

The whole series is now available in our boutique Photo Image Gallery - rue Haute 92 - 1000 Brussels

CARS by Andy Warhol

"A company's encounter with an artist is as complex as the perfect presentation of perfect products. " (1)

Andy Warhol's Cars series was commissioned by Mercedes-Benz in 1986 to celebrate the centenary of the invention of the motor car.

The artist was to do a series of 80 car pictures using 20 selected Mercedes models

This was the last series Warhol did, as he passed away the following year, before finishing it.

The strongest of the lot, were the 1954 Grand Prix car (see above) and the predominantly black paintings of a 1954 300 SL Coupe.

Cars has been exhibited just twice in its entirety in public: in 1988 Tübingen in 1988, and at the Albertina, Vienna from 22 January–16 May 2010.

Half of the series was shown in Milton Keynes in September 2001.

Although the artist is primarily known for his more iconic work featuring Marilyn Monroe or Campbell’s soup cans, the artist, who never learned how to drive, was always fascinated with cars.  The very first car he drew was his brother’s produce delivery truck when he was 18 years old.  Aside from his BMW M1 Art Car, he made giant canvases of car crashes and his "Twelve Cadillacs" in the ’60s and prints of VWs and trucks in the ’80s. To Warhol, the Cadillac was as iconic as Mickey Mouse, Marilyn Monroe, the Campbell’s soup can or the Coca-Cola bottle.

It seems only logical that cars would be a recurring theme in Andy Warhol’s work. With pop art honing in on, and poking fun at the implications of mass-produced consumer culture, the automobile represented one of American industry’s biggest triumphs and most impactful contributions on a global scale.  

"Car paintings add some twists to the Warhol legend, showing the artist once more selling himself and his talent without quite selling out." (2)

(1) Edzard Reuter, Daimler-Benz AG chairman, in his catalogue introduction to ''Andy Warhol, Cars,'' exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1988.

(2) Roberta Smith for the NYT in 1988

Le Chat by Philippe Geluck

Le Chat turns 30 this year. Philippe was 30 when gave birth to his now famous cat.

Even though Philippe Geluck's destiny seemed all traced for him, being born into an artistic family with an illustrator father, an employee of the house so taken by his drawings that he sends young Philippe's drawings to a local publication which immediately accepts to publish it, .... Philippe starts his career as an actor.

After graduating from the National Institute of Performing Arts (INSAS), Philippe appears on the various stages of Belgium's leading theatres for the next ten years. But always with pen and pencils at hand ... He never stops drawing and has shows in Europe and the US at the same time.

The big breakthrough in Philippe's career comes in 1983 when the leading French Belgian newspaper Le Soir asks him to come up with a cartoon character for the paper.

Overnight, Le Chat is born and Philippe's acting career comes to an end.  The cat is a "deceptively simple and deadpan commentator" who, in true Belgian style "reveals life's underlying surrealism and absurdity" which is the main  reason he is so easy to like and appeals to such large audiences. 

The cat quickly becomes the papers's mascot and since 1983, more than 8000 cat cartoons have appeared in the paper. Many more have been syndicated in French dailies and magazines and have appeared in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Italy, ... and Iran.

To date, the Cat has sold 12 million copies of his 20 albums.

Where the Cat is headed next is still being debated

Now 30, The Cat is leaving callow youth behind him and waddling forward into mature adulthood, followed closely by his creator. Neither he nor we know where he will go
next. 

All you ever wanted to know about Dali's Moustache

Dali’s Moustache

“Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dalí.”

Dali is known for art, of course, but also for his eccentric character, his fashion sense and his showmanship. If Dali was unique and singular, he worked hard to achieve it all.

His most distinctive feature was without a doubt his signature curled moustache. In a 2010 poll, it was voted the most famous moustache of all times.

While it is commonly believed that Dali’s inspiration for his moustache was classical Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, he did not confirm this theory when asked about it on a TV show in the 50's. Instead, besides confirming it to be "the most serious part of my personality”, he added it was “a very simple Hungarian moustache. Mr. Marcel Proust used the same kind of pomade for this moustache."

On another instance, Dali claimed his moustache helped him paint and served as an extra brush: 

“This very morning, and just at the moment of not shaving myself, I discovered that my moustache can serve as an ultra-personal brush. With the points of its hair, I can paint a fly with all the details of his hair. And while I am painting my fly, I think philosophically of my moustache, to which all the flies and all the curiosities of my era came to be monotonously and irresistibly stuck. Some day perhaps one will discover a truth almost as strange as this moustache- namely, that Salvador Dali was possibly also a painter”

Dali's moustache was a language on its own, the subject of an entire book by Philippe Halsman and often compared to his paintings:

Attention-grabbing, extroverted, disruptive of social norms, and more often then not, defying the laws of gravity.

Almost 30 years after he passed away and was buried, Dali has made the headlines with his moustache again as they appear to not only defy the laws of gravity but the tests of time too. When the artist's body was exhumed to undergo DNA tests 2 days ago, to the exhumers’ great surprise, they found the artists’ moustache to be intact at its famous "10 past 10". This seems to be Dali’s latest “prodigious thing”.

'Salvador Dali' by Oscar Abolafia is available at Photo Image Gallery, rue Haute 92, 1000 Brussels

'Calling Card' by Tomi Ungerer

"Calling Card"  (1967) by Tomi Ungerer

In the late 60’s Tomi Ungerer moves to new offices on 42nd street, Mahattan’s red Light district. As is common then, he sends all his friends and acquaintances a card with his new details. Except, he is Tomi, and true to his style and biting sense of humour he does not send a regular card but a neatly folded poster that opens showing him smiling and happily waving from an opened door situated between a woman’s open legs. A rebirth of sorts and a wink to the women working in his new neighbourhood.

What Tomi probably does not know then is that his heydays in the US are already counted at the time, and his phenomenal success will be matched only by his quick demise.

Tomi’s adventures and success in the US start as another “American Dream” story. Only a year after arriving in the US, with but $60 in his pocket and a trunk full of drawings and manuscripts, Tomi’s success starts with the publication of his first children's book “ The Mellops go Flying” and his first advertising campaign.

A stark contrast with his rather difficult childhood and early adulthood in France. His first memories and drawings date from the dark days Alsace was occupied by the Germans. Described by one of his school teachers as a “willfully perverse and subversive individualist” he fails his Baccalauréat. From there he is discharged from the French Camel Corps for illness and thereafter he is kicked out of the Decorative Arts School in Strasbourg. It is at that point that Tomi feels ants in his pants and the need to travel and discover new horizons.

Tomi's career peaks shortly after his arrival in the US. Besides his success with his children's books, he also makes a name for himself with witty advertising campaigns for the New York Times and the Village Voice, biting satirical illustrations about the business world, and brutal pictorial responses to racism, fascism, and the Vietnam War.

Ungerer also makes graphic and satirical erotic drawings throughout his career. If those drawings never shocked or disturbed him in his career in Europe, it is too much for puritanical America and it will bring him to his downfall from the US where he will be ostracized from society, banned from libraries, punished and ultimately sent away.

From the US, Tomi, will emigrate to Canada where he gets married before returning to the Old Continent and relocating in Ireland where he lives till today. 

His career will flourish in Europe and he will be the recipient of numerous prizes and awards. Not only will he receive the Jacob Burckhardt prize by the Goethe Foundation, be made Commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters and be appointed Chargé de Mission by Jack Lang the French Minister of Culture, he will also be awarded the Légion d’Honneur in Paris in 1990.

On the other side of the Atlantic, however, matters will take much longer to resolve and it will take him some 40 years to be re-instated. In 2012, the documentary by American director, Brad Bernstein “Far Out isn’t enough: The Tomi Ungerer’s Story” premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival. Three years later a major retour and retrospective is organized in his honour in NY “All in One”. An amused but satisfied 83 year old Tomi attends the event. He is finally back. After more than 40 years in exile, his work is finally getting the attention and praise it deserves in the difficult NY Art World.  

'Calling Card' is available at Photo Image Gallery, rue Haute 92, 1000 Brussels