WARHOL, ANDY
1928 Pittsburgh, PA/USA–1987 New York

Title: Mick Jagger.
Date: 1975.
Technique: Colour silkscreen on Arches watercolours.
Depiction Size: 107 x 71 cm.
Sheet Size: 110.5 x 73 cm.
Notation: Signed and numbered. Additionally signed by Mick Jagger.
Publisher: Seabird Editions, Washington D.C. (publisher).
Number: 166/250.
Frame: Framed.


The publisher’s copyright stamp verso.



Provenance:
- - Private Collection of North Germany


Literature:
- Feldman, Frayda/Schellmann, Jörg: Andy Warhol Prints – A Catalogue Raisonné 1962–1987, Milan 2003 (4th ed.), WVZ No. II.139



- From the iconic portfolio of the same name

- Warhol’s intimate and eccentric gaze offers a unique perspective on the music legend

- Warhol designed the cover for the legendary Rolling Stones album ‘Sticky Fingers’

- Mick Jagger was a lifelong friend and, at the same time, Warhol’s favourite subject



The Symbiosis of Two Pop Icons

Andy Warhol’s ten-part portrait series Mick Jagger from 1975 ranks among the key works of his engagement with the phenomenon of celebrity culture and the media construction of identity. Mick Jagger—frontman of the The Rolling Stones and the epitome of the eccentric rock star—provided Warhol with the perfect projection surface: charismatic, excessive, and world-famous. In contrast to his earlier depictions of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley in the 1960s, Warhol here portrays not an already mythologized star, but a living protagonist of the present. In doing so, he brought his art even closer to the immediacy of contemporary culture and the spirit of the 1970s.

Warhol and Jagger shared a close friendship after first meeting in 1964 at a party hosted by the Rolling Stones. Their first major creative collaboration followed in 1971, when Warhol co-designed the cover of the Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers. The now-iconic cover features a close-up image of a man’s crotch clad in tight jeans, complete with a functioning zipper that, when opened, reveals underwear beneath. To this day, it is regarded as one of the most legendary and widely discussed album covers in music history.



Mick Jagger Immortalized in Iconic Splendor

In the summer of 1975, Warhol took a series of Polaroid photographs of Jagger at his home in Montauk, Long Island, which served as the basis for the ten-part portfolio. The photographs depict him shirtless from various perspectives and in different moods. In the present work, Jagger’s upper body is shown in profile, while his head turns over his right shoulder, confronting the viewer with an intense, penetrating gaze.

Building upon this photographic foundation, Warhol transformed the image in the silkscreen through loose, sketch-like lines that fragmentarily trace the musician’s face and body. Bold fields of pink, black, and gold distort Jagger’s features and imbue the portrait with an iconic aura. By fragmenting Jagger’s physiognomy and altering it through sharply contrasting colors, Warhol creates an effect poised between documentary likeness and stylized mask, between intimacy and estrangement. Particularly remarkable is the expressive tension of the composition: the overlays of color appear almost to dismantle the face, as though Warhol sought to reveal the many layers of Jagger’s persona.

Warhol succeeds in portraying not merely a rock star, but an entire era through Jagger’s features. During the 1970s, Jagger embodied the spirit of a generation like few other artists: rebellion, hedonism, and the testing of boundaries between art, music, and lifestyle. That Warhol chose to immortalize him in an entire series underscores the mutual fascination and admiration shared by two pop icons who themselves became symbols of a global youth culture. This symbiosis is completed in the present sheet, which bears both Warhol’s signature and Jagger’s own.



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#Andy Warhol #Pop Art #Photographs #USA #Post-War Art #Colour silkscreen #Print #Celebrities #1970s #Framed #Silkscreen.







In accordance with §26 UrhG (German Copyright Act), VAN HAM is obliged to pay a statutory resale royalty on the sale proceeds of all original works of fine art and photography whose authors have not been deceased for 70 years prior to the end of the calendar year of the sale. The buyer shall contribute 1.5% of the hammer price to this fee.