Lot 654 D

The source for Andy Warhol's portrait was the famous painting from Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein from 1787. The classicist work is a lifesize depiction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe resting on a ruin in the Roman countryside. In Warhol's interpretation of the painting, the focus is on Goethe's head, his large hat, reminiscent of a halo, and mapped in the artist's typical colour scheme. Goethe himself addressed the psychological impact of colour, and here becomes a vehicle of his own theory.
From the 1970s Warhol worked increasingly with celebrities of mass culture from entertainment and politics, as well as commission work which was tailored to fit certain countries and areas of interest. The Goethe portrait from 1982 is an example of this. Alongside personalities from the media world prominant in Warhol's oeuvre, the writer and thinker also become icons of popular culture. (Cf. Henry Geldzahler, Introduktion, in: Frayda Feldman et.al. (ed.), Werkverzeichnis Druckgraphik, Munich 1989, p.XII)