Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987)
Charles Aznavour, 1979
Graphite on HMP paper
31 3/8 × 23 3/4 in. (79.7 × 60.3 cm)
41 3/8 × 33 1/4 × 1 in. framed (105.1 × 84.5 × 2.5 cm)
Unique work
Authentication:
Accompanied by documentation from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Reference: TOP 115.005
Literature:
Klaus Albrecht Schröder, ed., Andy Warhol: Popstars — Zeichnungen und Collagen / Drawings and Collages, Albertina, Vienna, 2006, p. 40, illustrated.
Price: on request
About the Work
Executed in 1979, Charles Aznavour is a large-scale, unique graphite portrait by Andy Warhol depicting the celebrated French-Armenian singer, songwriter and actor.
Warhol’s portraits of the 1970s transformed musicians, actors, social figures and cultural personalities into contemporary icons. Here, rather than relying upon the saturated color and repetition associated with his screenprints, Warhol reduces Aznavour’s likeness to an extraordinarily economical network of graphite lines. The result is both unmistakably Warhol and surprisingly intimate.
The drawing belongs to Warhol’s important body of Popstars portraits. Working from photographic source imagery, Warhol enlarged the sitter’s image through projection and selected the contours he considered essential to defining the face. This process produced drawings whose apparent simplicity belies their careful mediation between photography, drawing and Warhol’s celebrated screenprinted portraits.
Aznavour was an especially fitting subject. One of the defining voices of 20th-century French popular culture, his career as a singer, lyricist and actor extended internationally across several decades. Warhol’s portrait places him within the artist’s broader visual pantheon of performers and cultural personalities.
Importantly, this exact drawing is illustrated on page 40 of the Albertina’s 2006 publication Andy Warhol: Popstars — Drawings and Collages. The publication accompanied the Albertina Museum’s major exhibition devoted to Warhol’s drawings and collages of celebrated musicians, singers and performers.
The work’s substantial scale—approximately 31 × 24 inches unframed and more than 41 × 33 inches framed—gives the restrained graphite portrait an impressive physical presence when installed.
A particularly elegant example of Warhol’s portraiture, Charles Aznavour combines three desirable characteristics within his work on paper: a unique composition, an internationally recognized sitter, and documented inclusion in the scholarly literature surrounding Warhol’s Popstars portraits.
