The Warhol Foundation is cleaning out its closet and getting out of the Warhol selling business to focus on the grantmaking business. So everything must go. This week was the first of many sales to come at Christie's.
And hey-ho, there were two portraits of kids in mix. They're the kind of expensive commission that Warhol loved to crank out in the 70s and 80s to pay the bills: silk screened paintings based on Polaroid headshots. The first one [above], made in 1985, was of Filippo Chia, the young son of Florentine painter Sandro Chia.
It went unsold, maybe because it's kind of boring. Seriously, like three levels of phoned in beyond even Andy's standard practice. [No offense, of course, to little Filippo, of course, who now operates a Sienese winery with his dad.]
The second is, more like it. It's a portrait of, who knows? No idea. It's listed as an "unidentified child." Painted in 1980, the kid looks to be around six years old. Which means he'd be in his mid- to late 30s now. Is it you?
Do you vaguely remember a trip to the city 1st grade, where an awkward man in a bad wig who your parents fawned over inexplicably, took your picture, and then they got divorced a few months later and you moved to California, and never heard another word about it?
Because some random dude just paid $80,500 to hang your face on the wall of his place in the Hamptons. Crazy days.
Nov 12, 2012, Lot 301: Unidentified Child, Andy Warhol, sold for $80,500 [christies]
Previously: I was shot by Andy Warhol: the baby in Warhol's Screen Tests
Warhol's Paintings for Children: The Exhibit
