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Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) by Andy Warhol is estimated to achieve more than $60 million when it comes up at Sotheby’s in New York on November 13. The monumental painting is one of only four Car Crash works of this scale in Warhol’s pivotal Death and Disaster series. It measures over eight feet by 13 feet.  It is the only one of the series remaining in private hands. The work, which boasts distinguished provenance including Gunter Sachs, Charles Saatchi, and the legendary Swiss dealer Thomas Ammann, has been in the same collection since 1988. This version has been seen in public only once in the past 26 years. 

The Death and Disaster series stands as arguably Warhol’s most significant artistic achievement. The series explored many of the key themes that defined his entire artistic career – the potential of mass-media to transform anonymity to celebrity as well as a perceived indifference to death in the modern era – and is considered one of the most provocative, confrontational and brilliant projects undertaken by any artist in the 1960s. It is not coincidental that Warhol created the series at the same time as his iconic portraits of celebrities touched by death and disaster such as Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy who had found their private tragedy catapulted onto the public arena.

The other three monumental canvasses in the series belong to museums:  Orange Car Crash 14 Times in The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Black and White Disaster #4 in the Kunstmuseum, Basel; and Orange Car Crash in the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung, Ludwig, Vienna.  (Click on image to enlarge).

UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR $105.4 MILLION.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 7th, 2013 at 10:25 am and is filed under ART, AUCTIONS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.