Andy Warhol « Ten Lizes » (1999)

Overview

Ten similar faces are printed in black, in two rows, on a big canvas measuring 5,65 meters long by 2 high. Similar, these faces ? Not quite : the viewer can distinguish many little differences, like the variations that might come from a same mould. He can also recognise the face of a famous actress, Elizabeth Taylor, "Liz". Andy Warhol composed this picture in 1963 from a photo of the star and by repeating it ten times thanks to a screen-printing screen. Why this face ? Why this repetition ? Warhol does not reveal the keys to his work easily. He became a painter by chance and seems to choose his motifs arbitrarily. Working in New York in the 1960s, at the heart of the "pop art" movement, could he be a sort of negative reflection of consumer society ? A picture like this, which seems to break with traditional portrait art, can however be deciphered just as well as a more ancient painting...