Jackie Kennedy III by Andy Warhol

Jackie Kennedy III by Andy Warhol

Warhol began his “Jackie” series shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. As the basis for his paintings, he selected eight photographs from the mass-media coverage of the assassination and cropped the pictures to focus on the president’s widow. The high contrast of magazine and newspaper photographs served the artist well in his process of enlarging the images and transferring them to canvas via silk screen. During 1964 Warhol produced an undocumented number of individual paintings of Jackie Kennedy on canvases 20 by 16 inches, which were sold as single units and in multiple configurations. In this particular group, she is seen in four different “poses” that present a range of expressions and costumes provided by journalists images. The view of Jackie standing with a uniformed soldier by her side, for example, crops and reverses the cover photograph from Life magazine on December 6, 1963.

Although Warhol was already impressed with the glamour of Jackie Kennedy by 1962, he was unmoved by the news of John Kennedy’s assassination the following year. He later recalled:

I heard the news over the radio when I was alone painting in my studio. I don’t think I missed a stroke. I wanted to know what was going on out there, but that was the extent of my reaction…. Henry Geldzahler wanted to know why I wasn’t more upset, so I told him about the time I was walking in India and saw a bunch of people in a clearing having a ball because somebody they really liked had just died and how I realized then that everything was just how you decided to think about it. I’d been thrilled having Kennedy as president; he was handsome, young, smart–but it didn’t bother me that much that he was dead. What bothered me was the way the television and radio were programming everybody to feel so sad. It seemed like no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get away from the thing…. John Quinn, the playwright … was moaning over and over, “But Jackie was the most glamorous First Lady we’ll every get.”

Andy Warhol was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. Andy Warhol’s works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. Andy Warhol’s Marilyn and Andy Warhol’s Soup Cans are some of the most recognized and collectible of his artworks. From Andy Warhol Paintings to Andy Warhol Prints and unique pieces, the artist’s works are available for sale from Guy Hepner.