Mao
Warhol based this image
of Chairman Mao on the frontispiece portrait in Mao's famous little red
book, The Thoughts of Chairman Mao. This official photo of China's revolutionary leader could be seen on the walls of homes, businesses and government buildings throughout China. To Warhol's eye this may have seemed like the advertising campaigns of Coca-Cola promoting its consumption by everyone. Unlike many of Warhol's paintings of the 1960s, which were painted with very delineated areas of color, the Mao paintings and other works from the 1970s, were more painterly in style showing colors mixing together in the brushwork. In his 1974 exhibition at the Musée Galliera in Paris, the Mao paintings were hung on Warhol's Mao wallpaper for the first time.
Point of View by Zahid Mahmud, Executive Council Member, Muslim
Community of Greater Pittsburgh, Monroeville, PA
"This painting of Mao and Mao Wallpaper illustrate and remind me of the greatness of Mao. His simple clothes reflect a contact with a common Chinese person. His smile and soft eyes give a fatherly look and ask you to give 110% of yourself to your nation. The many variations imply a diversity of colors a leader has to wear to accommodate all pressures from the society... just like a tree weathering the elements. During my last visit to China, I saw at Tianamen Square, his similar portrayal, appealing to all Chinese and foreigners of all ages."
Point of View by Carter Ratcliff, art critic
"Having arrived at the upper levels of the consumer world. . .Warhol opened his art to an icon from China, a nation dedicated to eradicating whatever vestiges of bourgeois consumerism might linger in its citizenry. Now that Chairman Mao has died and been replaced by leaders less hostile to traditional marketplace economies, it is a bit difficult to recall how exotic China seemed to the West [in the seventies]. Whether presented as a brutal fanatic or a socialist saint, Mao had the aura of a uniquely singleminded – perhaps even pure – politician. Idealistic and uncompromising, at least in his public pronouncements, he seemed very different from the economic and political leaders of what he called the 'decadent' West. Warhol showed uncanny acuteness in introducing the Mao image into his art at a time when the artist himself was just coming to enjoy, full-scale, the benefits of Western 'decadence.'"
Point of View by Nancy Reese, Chief Creative Officer, Akoya
"This installation evokes Mao’s absolute confidence in his vision. Yet it is one fat thumb in the eye of Chinese communism. I remember seeing the portrait as a teenager, around the time of Nixon’s trip to China. It made Mao, and China, suddenly seem less threatening. It was part of building that tenuous bridge between our cultures. Here it symbolizes the supremacy of all things American. 'Look, we’re so big and bad, we can assimilate Mao. No problem. He’s just another commodity.'"
Andy Warhol, photo Greg Gorman, 1983
