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The portrait of the eighties’ golden couple of John McEnroe and actress Tatum O’Neal, which was painted by Pop-Art master Andy Warhol, is to be auctioned by Sotheby’s auction house.

On Tuesday July 1st the painting, which carries an estimate of between £250,000 and £300,000 is going under the hammer, with all proceeds set to go to the philanthropic organisation Habitat for Humanity.

The painting is one of Warhol’s finest works and represents his era of painting larger than life iconic celebrities during their prime, such as his works of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Both McEnroe and O’Neal were at the top of their game at the time of the painting. John McEnroe was a world number one, and a Wimbledon and US Open tennis champion. Tatum O’Neal was a successful Hollywood actress who had won an Oscar at aged ten.

McEnroe even commented about the experience of being immortalised in one of Andy Warhol’s paintings, in his autobiography:

Was I overly impressed? A bit star struck? Maybe. Maybe Tatum was too. It’s a funny thing when two well-known people meet: There’s an immediate magnetism, because you seem to have so many things in common – not the least of which is that you both instantly feel liberated from what the rest of the world usually demands.

If you don’t have over a quarter of a million pounds to spare for this painting, you could have your own photos on canvas in the same pop-art style.

Further proof that collecting art was something for the super rich only happened yesterday when the latest work from French artist Monet sold at auction for a staggering £40.9 million.
His work, ‘Le Bassin Aux Nympheas’ fetched almost double what it had been estimated at, which would have made a new record even had it sold for the estimated £24 million. Instead the piece went for £40.9 million, smashing the previous record which was also held by Monet. His 1873 work, ‘Le Pont du chemin de fer a Argenteuil’ sold for £20.9 million in May.
‘Le Bassin Aux Nympheas’ was purchased by a mystery buyer. It was painted in 1919 in Giverny and has only ever made one public appearance.
Even though someone may have paid such a huge sum of money for the painting, you can still have artwork on your wall for much less. You don’t need to visit an art auction and purchase the next Monet masterpiece; instead you could turn your own photographs into works of art by having them printed on canvas.

When you think about the great centres of Pop Art around the world, Swindon isn’t usually at the forefront of your mind. New York perhaps, but Swindon, in the heart of Wiltshire? Not usually no, however this Tuesday Swindon will be home to an art auction featuring some of the leading art luminaries, such as David Hocney and Clive Barker.

Kidson-Trigg at Highworth are staging the art auction this week, where 300 works of art go under the hammer in a dispersal sale. The works are all 20th Century, containing modern art, contemporary art and traditional artwork. They are all currently owned by the Jarvis Hotel group.

The Hotel chain has many hotels in the Swindon area, and they’ve built up the collection of artwork over the last fifteen years. They’d purchased the art mainly from auction houses in London to decorate their range of hotels.

Pippa Kidson-Trigg is one of the auctioneers, and she states:

It is a genuine dispersal sale, everything has to sell, so pictures have inviting estimate prices, and we hope it will provide purchasers with the opportunity to enjoy and invest in affordable art amongst the infamous names of today’s Contemporary artists such as Gerald Laing, (one of the original wave of pop artists), Clive Barker (one of the leading British Pop artists) and Sir Terry Frost RA (One of Britains most succesful C20th artists).

Valerie Solanis doesn’t go down in history as one of those infamous people who changed history by assassinating someone famous. Instead she’s barely remembered by most as the woman who tried, and failed, to murder the Pop Artist Andy Warhol.

In 1969, on June 3rd, just days before Robert Kennedy was assassinated, Valerie Solanis shot Andy Warhol in his office in Manhattan, New York.

Solanis was familiar with Warhol had she’d actually appeared in one of the pop artist’s films. A victim of a tragic past where she was abused as a child, and the author of the book ‘SCUM Manifesto’ which was a tirade against the male species, Solanis believed that Andy Warhol possessed too much control over her own life.

She came to this decision after Andy Warhol had lost a play that she had written and sent to him.

Tragically Warhol didn’t survive long after the incident as it had affected him profoundly. He died in 1987 after telling many of his friends that he’d felt dead for a long time. Solanis served just three years in prison for the attempted murder, and died herself just 14 months after Andy Warhol in a hotel in San Francisco.

The jeans market has always been one of the most competitive throughout the last few decades, with brands going in and out of fashion. Although they’re seen as being very stylish, and some of the commercials have been labelled iconic moments, you’d never really associate jeans with art.

That may be about to change however as the brand Pepe Jeans are just about to step into the art world.

Pepe Jeans have put in a request to use the works of Pop-Art icon Andy Warhol in a range of their jeans, purely in Europe.

Warhol himself was famous for wearing Levi jeans, but the Warhol foundation actually cancelled a contract they had with Levi to produce jeans branded with the Warhol name. They have now agreed for Pepe Jeans to use the artist’s work in a collection that is to be on sale in August. The collection is simply called ‘The Art’.

There will be two different London collections, one focusing on signed contracts of Warhol’s and the other using his portraits.

Only the greatest icons of our time were immortalised by the Pop Art master Andy Warhol. Wayne Gretzky, Marilyn Monroe, a tin of soup… well, now one the most famous and influential men in the field of music and politics has been iconised on canvas. Bono, lead singer of Irish rock band U2 and one of the foremost speakers in the Make Poverty History campaign has been immortalised by Steve Kaufman, the US pop artist and prodigy of Andy Warhol.

Kaufman created a two panel work of U2’s Bono out of his studio in California, rather ingeniously titled ‘Bono 2 panel painting’. The work shows the Irish legend in portrait and profile, sporting his ever present trademark sunglasses.

Apparently Kaufman made the decision to paint Bono after a recent stay in Dublin where he participated in a pop art exhibition held by ‘Pop Art Ireland’. His work, which went on show in the Shelbourne Hotel, completely sold out.

The work is now on auction at the PopArtIreland.com website, which is expected to start at 7,000 Euros.

According to Andy Warhol the answer yes. His painting of the Campbell’s tomato soup tin has become an iconic image of the 1960’s.

Some critics say that Warhol’s work was fake, and some even suggest that he was a hoax. However, many others believe that there is much more to his work than meets the eye.

Warhol was not just painting a tin of soup. He was expressing through his artwork the huge wave of consumerism that had taken over society. The 1950’s and 1960’s saw the birth of branding. People were not buying the tin because it was tomato soup, but because it was Campbell’s.

His work, like the brands he drew, appealed to the masses, because everybody could relate to it; from the President, to a Hollywood star to Mr/Mrs Average. Warhol was passionate about popular culture and this is why he wanted to produce popular art (pop art).

In order to define his niche in art, he needed to define his subject matter. He painted the things he loved and things he had a passion for. He was quoted as saying that he ate Campbell’s soup for lunch everyday, clearly the motivation behind his painting then!

Robert Rauschenberg, an American pop artist and pioneer of his industry, died at the age of 82 this week.

Rauschenberg, who had been ill for some time, was described by the New York Times as a ‘Titan’ of art. He was born in 1925 in Texas.

Rauschenberg was a pioneer of an art style dubbed the ‘Combines’, which merges painting with sculpture. It wasn’t until the sixties that Rauschenberg moved into pop art, inspired as so many were by the works of Andy Warhol. Rauschenberg began using contemporary photography in his art with photos of public figures, including JFK.

As well as silkscreen painting (like Warhol) Rauschenberg also participated in performance art and set design.
One of Rauschenberg’s works was a painting created on his bed quilt using household items such as toothpaste. His reasoning for this was that he had an idea and didn’t have any canvas or paint to hand.
Rauschenberg even won a Grammy Award for the album cover for the Talking Heads work, Speaking in Tongues.

An Andy Warhol portrait of Mao Zedong looks set to become the artist’s most expensive work ever when it goes on sale at auctioneer’s Christies for $120 million.

The auctioneer’s are offering the painting as part of a private sale in Hong Kong, rather than through a public auction. They claim with the pending Olympics in Beijing, the time is perfect to sell a painting of this stature in the area.

It’s helped by the fact that the popularity of Andy Warhol has significantly increased in Asia recently.

Christies also hope the sale of the Warhol painting will help to build attention around art with a spate of major New York art auctions coming up. There have been fears of a slowdown in the art market.

It is hoped that some wealthy art dealers will bid on the work, which includes contemporary, modern and impressionist. Some experts are more pessimistic though predicting that much of the work will go unsold.

Art prices have fallen in the first quarter of 2008 by 7.5%, which has come as something of a shock after prices had risen constantly for the past several years.

Brett Gorvy is the deputy chairman at Christies:

If anything, the market has become more selective, so they’re chasing masterpieces.

The painting Christies are looking to sell for $120 million is of the former communist leader Mao Zedong, and stands at a staggering 14 foot tall.

Roy Lichtenstein is one of the most celebrated Pop Artists of our time. He was born in 1923 in New York and was privileged to be part of an upper-middle-class family.

Despite his talents in art it wasn’t until he graduated from high school that he attended his first art class, as his school didn’t offer art as a subject. He enrolled in the Art Students League of New York where he took Summer classes under Reginald Marsh. It was here that Lichtenstein learned his love of art, so much so that he left New York to study Fine Art at the State University of Ohio.

During his time at the University Lichtenstein was forced to take three years out to fight in the Second World War.

He then returned to Ohio State to finish his studies under the tutorship of Hoyt L. Sherman, who it is widely regarded, had a significant impact on Lichtenstein’s work. After graduation Lichtenstein stayed on at Ohio State to become a tutor, where he stayed for a further ten years.