USA - Figurative Paintings

Original and unique artwork by Hunt Slonem. A Certificate of Authenticity will be accompanied with this piece. From the Series "Bunnies". Oil on wood. Unframed Dimensions 10 x 8 inch...

Stephanie Hartshorn's beautiful original impressionist oil landscape "In the Silence" (2024) depicts an American midwestern plains scene with a large cloud forming above. Artist Bio...

"Marine Mist" by Leigh Ann Van Fossan (United States) is a handmade landscape painting that is unframed, but ready to hang.

John Randall Nelson’s paintings are layered with his own personal language consisting of patterns, symbols, and archetypes that may not make any literal sense but play on subconsciou...

Dan Parry-Jones – Swimmer with Orange Armbands Mixed Media on Panel 38.5 x 38.5 in (80 x 80 cm) White custom frame included "Swimmer with Orange Armbands" is a striking mixed-media...

Mid 19th Century Original Oil Painting of Fishing on Scottish Loch in the Style of Alexander Nasmyth Gorgeous 19th Century landscape painting of a Scottish loch with fisherman and castle ruins in the style of Alexander Nasmyth (Scottish, 1758 - 1840). This painting features the rough-hewned nature of Scotland's landscape while juxtaposing the peacefulness of a fisherman casting his line into the loch. Adding interest is the castle ruins on the cliff's edge with a sailboat beneath. There is something new to see with each viewing of this picture. Signed: Illegible monogram lower left corner. (See image) Framed: Presented in rustic giltwood frame of the period. Condition: Good Canvas size: 18"H x 24"W. Framed Size: 22"H x 28"W x 3"D Alexander Nasmyth was a painter, illustrator, landscape gardener and engineer. Alexander Nasmyth's style appears to have been molded principally on that of Claude Lorrain in arrangement, color and mood, and on Jacob van Ruysdael...

This exquisite 18th-century portrait depicts a young girl, delicately rendered in the style of Sir Godfrey Kneller, one of the most celebrated portrait painters of the Baroque period...

Using the striking imagery that is abundant in the California landscape, queer artist Kory Alexander creates dreamy paintings that are flooded with vibrancy and movement. Kory consid...

A beautiful oil on canvas painting by the French artist, Jean Salabet. Salabet was a Parisian painter known for his colorful cityscapes depicting the times of his generation. His work is comparable to those of Jules Herve, Antoine Blanchard and Edouard Cortes. This painting is a wonderful example of his work from the prime of his career. Here you see the artists vendors selling paintings along the view of Notre Dame de Paris, located on the Île de la Cité in the 4th Arrondissement of Paris. People are scattered throughout between the tree lined street. The details are magnificent as Salabet captures the architecture of Paris so beautifully; you can feel the energy of the day and the excitement. The piece is signed by the artist lower left and it comes housed in a wonderful wood carved antique frame with linen liner and hanging wire on verso ready to be displayed. Art measures 10.75 x 13.75 inches Frame measures 16.25 x 19.25 inches Jean Salabet was a pseudonym used by the Spanish artist Juan Bayón Salado (1913-1995) in the mid-20th century. Juan Bayón Salado (Jean Salabet) was born in Bilbao Spain on June 24, 1913. He settled in Paris between 1950 and 1969 and when using the pseudonym Jean Salabet between 1950 and 1957 he was mainly selling his works through Mr...

Ulrich Gleiter's (EUR based) "Autumn Day, Northern Lakes (Finland)" is an oil painting that depicts trees on a bright blue shoreline. Bio/Artist Statement: German-born artist Ulric...

Medium: house-paint on upcycled WWII era quilt Becca Fuhrman (b. 1988, Boise, ID) is an interdisciplinary artist who specializes in multimedia large-sca...

Gary John's pop-street artworks have a whimsical, yet exciting and bold quality inspired by classic cartoon and comic book characters. Blending pop sensibilities with a roughened fau...

Na Kumuwaiwai Hohonu, Underwater Spirt - Hawaiian Symbolist Figurative Hawaiian symbolist nocturnal figurative of glowing whispy figure underwater with mountains and red coral garden by Marguerite Louis Blasingame (American; 1906-1947), circa 1940-45. Marguerite and her husband Frank Blasingame...

Provenance Acquired by the gallery directly from the artist FRAMED: 12" x 9"

Lee Jaffe, American (1950 - ) - Portrait of John Brown and Nat Turner, Year: 1983, Medium: Oil on Canvas, Size: 125 in. x 170 in. (317.5 cm x 431.8 cm)

James Massena March (American, 1953-2021) Untitled Oil on canvas 30 x 48 inches "My paintings are about space, form and energy. I generally start ...

Capturing movement in acrylic paint, Armen Ges experiments with optical illusions and perspective in his original pop artworks. To create these intriguing visuals, Ges employs tradit...

Yana Beylinson's (US based) "Glass Table" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts impressionistic white, and pink flowers melding together with green leaves. Artist Bio:...

This acrylic painting on paper can be framed or displayed easily by hanging with magnets. Tatana Kellner’s work is rooted in social issues. She has been exhibited in numerous venue...

A contemporary oil painting that resembles an early renaissance mural. Old masters throughout Art History come to mind, like Hieronymus Bosch, Jan Van Eyck, or Pieter Bruegel. Gordon depicts the "Strangled Planet" we live in: war, protests, and unrest abounds. At the same time, exploration, cooperation, and humanity persists. She uses European Medieval, Renaissance, and Neoclassical references around the main contemporary action. This is perhaps a reference to the uncertainty that is inherent in life—hardships as well as victories have always been depicted in grand compositions. The skeletons that climb, cling, and swing on either side of the painting are the reminders of this finite life. Artist Bio Kristy Gordon’s work is a frank and intimate reflection of her curiosity about other people, transformations and self-discovery. Her paintings hang in over 500 public and private collections worldwide including the Government of Ontario Art Collection. She has been a full-time, professional painter since 2004, exhibiting her work internationally and earning numerous awards including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2010, 2013), an Exceptional Merit Award from the Portrait Society of America (2014), and was a finalist for the 2013 Kingston Prize for Canadian portraiture. She has been widely featured in numerous magazines, art publications, radio and television shows, including International Artist, Fine Art Connoisseur, The Artist’s Magazine, Southwest Art and Bravo!’s Star Portraits. Gordon has seven years of experience teaching and conducting painting workshops throughout North America. She has taught at numerous academies and schools including The Academy of Realist Art Ottawa, The Lake Country Art House, and The Okanagan School of Arts in Penticton and has also substitute taught at the New York Academy of Art. She has lectured at China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, New Century Artists in New York City and the Art of the Portrait in Washington, DC. She received her MFA degree in Painting from the New York Academy of Art and holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Additionally, she has studied classical drawing and painting at the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto and Andreeva Portrait Academy in Santa Fe. She has also studied privately with artists including Yuqi Wang, Odd Nerdrum, Juan Martinez, Jeremy Lipking. Gordon is represented by Dacia Gallery in New York, Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor and Cube Gallery...

"Dominance" Oil painting 36" x 36" inch by Alina Shimova PURE SOUL series Shimova cares about the conservation of the fauna. She draws public attention to the problems of animals,...

This captivating early 19th-century painting of an interior farm scene by Abraham Cooper, circa 1830, is a testament to the artist's skill in capturing ...

Oil on canvas Signed in red, u.r. $16,000.00 + framing This artwork is offered by ClampArt, located in New York City. “Bruce Sargeant is a mythic figure in the modern art movement...

Inspired by her background in fashion, artist Lindsey McCord creates vibrant portraits that encapsulate the confidence that comes with the fun of being stylish and chic. Her figures ...

Lebanese American artist Sally K.'s captivating floral portraits are both mesmerizing and empowering. Her pop-realistic paintings are inspired by strong, feminine women, celebrating ...

Mary Spain (American, 1934–1983) Man with Bird Oil on canvas Signed middle right 13.5 x 11.75 inches 17 x 15 inches, framed Set in a realm of fantasy, Mary Spain’s work exhibits odd...

J. C. Morey is a Spanish artist from the province of Alicante. He was born into a family of artists and connected to the art world since the 60s, which gave him the opportunity from...

Alexander Charles Stuart The Attack of the Merrimac Signed lower left Oil on artist board 13 3/4 x 23 1/4 inches Alexander Charles Stuart, a Scottish-born painter of ships and marin...

Harry P Jr Sutton (1897 - 1984) was active/lived in Massachusetts. Harry Sutton is known for figures, interiors, and still life painting. This is a uniq...

Katrina Revenaugh Stai Fuori dal Mio Giardino Numero 1 Archival Pigment Ink, Acrylic, Spray Paint and Gold Leaf on Birch Panel Year: 2024 Size: 10 x 8 x 1.75 inches Signed: On Verso ...

Will Beger and his contemporary-minimalist paintings, take on an entirely unique approach to southwest art. Influenced by his youth and inspired by nature, ...

L'hymne du Roi David (King David's Dream) Oil on wood by Marc Chagall c late 70's Comes with Numbered and Verified Certificate of Authenticity from Comite C...

Francis Mora is often considered to be the American artist who most depicted Hispanic culture in American and abroad. He made a trip to Spain in the early 1900's and created mostly ...

Michael Magrin's ( US based) "Colorado Sunset" is an original, handmade oil painting of a moody sunset. This piece is framed in a natural float frame an...

This exquisite early 20th-century oil on panel by Dorothea Sharp captures the timeless and universal bond between mother and child in a tender Impressionist style. Painted circa 1900...

Antique American modernist nocturnal street scene oil painting by Jerome Myers (1867 - 1940). Oil on board. Framed. Signed. Measuring 16 by 18 inches overall and 9 by 11 painting al...

Surreal Full Moon Hawaii Cliff House Nocturnal Hawaiian 1940s Landscape Symbolic and surreal mid century nocturnal landscape of a lone house on a s...

A rare and breath taking work, with masterful bursh work and sublime execution of light. We are drawn to the subtle beauty and elegant pose. The tasteful compostion lends an intimate scene into the artists studio where Philip has captured her effortlessly. This piece comes displayed in a wonderful frame and hanging wire on verso. Art measures 24 x 20 inches Frame measures 30 x 26 inches Robert Philipp was born on February 2, 1895 in New York City. He was an American painter influenced by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and known for his nudes, still lifes, and portraits of attractive women and Hollywood stars. Moses Solomon Philipp showed early talent and grew up in a family atmosphere that fed and cultivated his creativity. At age of 15, he entered the Art Students League for four years and then continued his training at the National Academy of Design. His teachers at the League included George Bridgeman and Frank DuMond, and at the National Academy he studied with Douglas Volk...

Original Painting. New Yorker Cover Proposal Baseball c. 1939 Modern Cubist Deco Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) Play Ball New Yorker cover proposal, c. 1939 12 x 8 inches (sight) Framed 18 1/2 X 14 3/4 inches Gouache on board Estate sticker verso BIOGRAPHY: Antonio Petruccelli (1907-1994) began his career as a textile designer. He became a freelance illustrator in 1932 after winning several House Beautiful cover illustration contests. In addition to 24 Fortune magazine covers, four New Yorker covers, several for House Beautiful, Collier’s, and other magazines he did numerous illustrations for Life magazine from the 1930s – 60s. ‘Tony was Mr. Versatility for Fortune. He could do anything, from charts and diagrams to maps, illustrations, covers, and caricatures,’ said Francis Brennan, the former art director for Fortune. Over the course of his career, Antonio won several important design awards, designing a U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Steel Industry and designing the Bicentennial Medal...

Beautiful Mid-century painting depicts what is probably a Mexican of Latin American market scene. Oil on canvas glued down to panel measuring 9.75 x 15.25 inches; 11 x 16.5 inches fr...

David Shingler's (NC based) "Sangre De Cristo Sunrise, Colorado" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts the Rocky Mountains caught in the or...

MONICA ZERINGUE received her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans in 2006 and her BA in 1993. In 1999 she was awarded the Prix de l'Acadamie de Paris, Societe Inte...

Yana Beylinson's (US based) "Peony" is an original, handmade still-life oil painting that depicts a close up of a bright pink peony flower. About the artist: Yana is driven by a dee...

[Bruce Sargeant (1898-1938)] Man with Red Fez n.d. Signed in red, u.r. Double-sided oil painting on panel 30 x 24 inches

Wonderful early 20th-century oil on canvas depicting a view of the Scottish highlands and the River Usk. Sidney Yates Johnson was an active painter during the late Victorian period ...

A gentle mid-century portrait of a young girl by Pascal "Pablo" Cucaro (American, 1915-2004). Sealed in a layer of clear resin. Signed in a black textured medium, lower left: "cucaro...

"The Coward" (Woman Kissing Soldier). Original cover illustration for Life Magazine, published April 1919. Norman Rockwell’s The Coward (or, Woman Kissing Soldier) was published on...

Michael Miller's beautiful original photorealist Midwestern landscape painting "Homestead" (2024) depicts a cozy Midwestern red barn in the middle of a plains farmland, among a grey ...

Delton Demarest's "Historic Gebhard Mansion" (2024) is an original oil painting on panel painted on location en plein air, measuring 6 x 3.25 x 0.25 inches. This artwork captures the...

Unique figurative harlequin painting with Picasso style and abstract elements with dream-like layering by Robert Moesle (American, b.1932). Signed "Moesle" lower left. Titled "The Harlequin Prince" on verso. Displayed in a rustic painted giltwood frame with linen liner. Image size: 40"H x 32"W. Framed Size; 45"H x 37"W. Robert Moesle was born in San Jose, California in 1932. He graduated from San Jose State College and attended The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, England. Moesle lives in the Chateau region of France, which he finds to be an ideal location for a watercolorist. Moesle paints outside and enjoys watching the landscape change through the seasons. Unlike most watercolorists, Moesle takes his time painting and tries to capture the feeling of durability in his subjects. Moesle has exhibited his work in shows in London, Paris and throughout the United States. “Figurative painting by Robert Moesle are…lyrical, visionary, softly dream-like… Moesle’s Harlequin Prince offers a memory of early Picasso...

John Randall Nelson’s paintings are layered with his own personal language consisting of patterns, symbols, and archetypes that may not make any literal sense but play on subconsciou...

Artist: David Messer Title: Three Children Playing Year: circa 1960 Medium: Oil on Canvas, signed verso Size: 10.75 x 13.75 in. (27.31 x 34.93 cm)

Highly detailed landscape with a house and car by Edward K. Williams (American, 1870-1950). A large house sits atop a hill, looking down over a road that runs along the river. Three people are driving a car from the 1930s along the road. The scene is rendered with great detail - both the house and the car are very accurate. There is an ornate border around the piece that was not finished, including instructions for framing and matting. Signed "E K Williams" on verso, with an address. Presented in a giltwood frame with a new off-white mat. Frame size: 15.75"H x 12.75"W Image size: 7.75"H x 6.5"W Landscape painter, Edward K. Williams was born 1870 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Williams studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with Freer, Vanderpoel, Fursman, and Krehbiel. He exhibited there as well from 1903-1929 (including many winter scenes). He also exhibited at the Hoosier Salon, New York Watercolor Club, Herron Art Institute, American Watercolor Society, Brown County Art...

Artist: Alexander Litvinov Work: Original oil painting, handmade artwork, one of a kind Medium: Oil on Canvas Style: Classic Figurative Year: 2010 Title: Hetman Mazepa and Karl 12...

6006 A mother and child,figurative impressionistic style palette oil on canvas applied on board.Displayed in a wood frame.Artist unknown.Image size 10.5 H x 13.5 W

Screen print with stencil, acrylic and spray paint on wove paper. Hand signed on front; hand signed, dated with thumbprint by Mr. Brainwash and studio catalog number on verso. Art...

Elvis, Metallic Silver and Black Full Length Silkscreen Painting by Charles Lutz Silkscreen and silver enamel painted on vintage 1960's era linen with Artist's Denied stamp of the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. 82" x 40" inches 2010 Lutz's 2007 ''Warhol Denied'' series gained international attention by calling into question the importance of originality or lack thereof in the work of Andy Warhol. The authentication/denial process of the [[Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board]] was used to create value by submitting recreations of Warhol works for judgment with the full intention for the works to be formally marked "DENIED". The final product of the conceptual project being "officially denied" "Warhol" paintings authored by Lutz. Based on the full-length Elvis Presley paintings by Pop Artist Andy Warhol in 1964, this is likely one of his most iconic images, next to Campbell's Soup Cans and portraits of Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor, and Marlon Brando. This is the rarest of the Elvis works from the series, as Lutz sourced a vintage roll of 1960's primed artist linen which was used for this one Elvis. The silkscreen, like Warhol's embraced imperfections, like the slight double image printing of the Elvis image. Lutz received his BFA in Painting and Art History from Pratt Institute and studied Human Dissection and Anatomy at Columbia University, New York. Lutz's work deals with perceptions and value structures, specifically the idea of the transference of values. Lutz's most recently presented an installation of new sculptures dealing with consumerism at Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater House in 2022. Lutz's 2007 Warhol Denied series received international attention calling into question the importance of originality in a work of art. The valuation process (authentication or denial) of the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board was used by the artist to create value by submitting recreations of Warhol works for judgment, with the full intention for the works to be formally marked "DENIED" of their authenticity. The final product of this conceptual project is "Officially DENIED" "Warhol" paintings authored by Lutz. Later in 2013, Lutz went on to do one of his largest public installations to date. At the 100th Anniversary of Marcel Duchamp's groundbreaking and controversial Armory Show, Lutz was asked by the curator of Armory Focus: USA and former Director of The Andy Warhol Museum, Eric Shiner to create a site-specific installation representing the US. The installation "Babel" (based on Pieter Bruegel's famous painting) consisted of 1500 cardboard replicas of Warhol's Brillo Box (Stockholm Type) stacked 20 ft tall. All 1500 boxes were then given to the public freely, debasing the Brillo Box as an art commodity by removing its value, in addition to debasing its willing consumers. Elvis was "the greatest cultural force in the Twentieth Century. He introduced the beat to everything, and he changed everything - music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution." Leonard Bernstein in: Exh. Cat., Boston, The Institute of Contemporary Art and traveling, Elvis + Marilyn 2 x Immortal, 1994-97, p. 9. Andy Warhol "quite simply changed how we all see the world around us." Kynaston McShine in: Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art (and traveling), Andy Warhol: Retrospective, 1996, p. 13. In the summer of 1963 Elvis Presley was just twenty-eight years old but already a legend of his time. During the preceding seven years - since Heartbreak Hotel became the biggest-selling record of 1956 - he had recorded seventeen number-one singles and seven number-one albums; starred in eleven films, countless national TV appearances, tours, and live performances; earned tens of millions of dollars; and was instantly recognized across the globe. The undisputed King of Rock and Roll, Elvis was the biggest star alive: a cultural phenomenon of mythic proportions apparently no longer confined to the man alone. As the eminent composer Leonard Bernstein put it, Elvis was "the greatest cultural force in the Twentieth Century. He introduced the beat to everything, and he changed everything - music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution." (Exh. Cat., Boston, The Institute of Contemporary Art (and traveling), Elvis + Marilyn 2 x Immortal, 1994, p. 9). In the summer of 1963 Andy Warhol was thirty-four years old and transforming the parameters of visual culture in America. The focus of his signature silkscreen was leveled at subjects he brilliantly perceived as the most important concerns of day to day contemporary life. By appropriating the visual vernacular of consumer culture and multiplying readymade images gleaned from newspapers, magazines and advertising, he turned a mirror onto the contradictions behind quotidian existence. Above all else he was obsessed with themes of celebrity and death, executing intensely multifaceted and complex works in series that continue to resound with universal relevance. His unprecedented practice re-presented how society viewed itself, simultaneously reinforcing and radically undermining the collective psychology of popular culture. He epitomized the tide of change that swept through the 1960s and, as Kynaston McShine has concisely stated, "He quite simply changed how we all see the world around us." (Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art (and traveling), Andy Warhol: Retrospective, 1996, p. 13). Thus in the summer of 1963 there could not have been a more perfect alignment of artist and subject than Warhol and Elvis. Perhaps the most famous depiction of the biggest superstar by the original superstar artist, Double Elvis is a historic paradigm of Pop Art from a breath-taking moment in Art History. With devastating immediacy and efficiency, Warhol's canvas seduces our view with a stunning aesthetic and confronts our experience with a sophisticated array of thematic content. Not only is there all of Elvis, man and legend, but we are also presented with the specter of death, staring at us down the barrel of a gun; and the lone cowboy, confronting the great frontier and the American dream. The spray painted silver screen denotes the glamour and glory of cinema, the artificiality of fantasy, and the idea of a mirror that reveals our own reality back to us. At the same time, Warhol's replication of Elvis' image as a double stands as metaphor for the means and effects of mass-media and its inherent potential to manipulate and condition. These thematic strata function in simultaneous concert to deliver a work of phenomenal conceptual brilliance. The portrait of a man, the portrait of a country, and the portrait of a time, Double Elvis is an indisputable icon for our age. The source image was a publicity still for the movie Flaming Star, starring Presley as the character Pacer Burton and directed by Don Siegel in 1960. The film was originally intended as a vehicle for Marlon Brando and produced by David Weisbart, who had made James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause in 1955. It was the first of two Twentieth Century Fox productions Presley was contracted to by his manager Colonel Tom Parker, determined to make the singer a movie star. For the compulsive movie-fan Warhol, the sheer power of Elvis wielding a revolver as the reluctant gunslinger presented the zenith of subject matter: ultimate celebrity invested with the ultimate power to issue death. Warhol's Elvis is physically larger than life and wears the expression that catapulted him into a million hearts: inexplicably and all at once fearful and resolute; vulnerable and predatory; innocent and explicit. It is the look of David Halberstam's observation that "Elvis Presley was an American original, the rebel as mother's boy, alternately sweet and sullen, ready on demand to be either respectable or rebellious." (Exh. Cat., Boston, Op. Cit.). Indeed, amidst Warhol's art there is only one other subject whose character so ethereally defies categorization and who so acutely conflated total fame with the inevitability of mortality. In Warhol's work, only Elvis and Marilyn harness a pictorial magnetism of mythic proportions. With Marilyn Monroe, whom Warhol depicted immediately after her premature death in August 1962, he discovered a memento mori to unite the obsessions driving his career: glamour, beauty, fame, and death. As a star of the silver screen and the definitive international sex symbol, Marilyn epitomized the unattainable essence of superstardom that Warhol craved. Just as there was no question in 1963, there remains still none today that the male equivalent to Marilyn is Elvis. However, despite his famous 1968 adage, "If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings" Warhol's fascination held purpose far beyond mere idolization. As Rainer Crone explained in 1970, Warhol was interested in movie stars above all else because they were "people who could justifiably be seen as the nearest thing to representatives of mass culture." (Rainer Crone, Andy Warhol, New York, 1970, p. 22). Warhol was singularly drawn to the idols of Elvis and Marilyn, as he was to Marlon Brando and Liz Taylor, because he implicitly understood the concurrence between the projection of their image and the projection of their brand. Some years after the present work he wrote, "In the early days of film, fans used to idolize a whole star - they would take one star and love everything about that star...So you should always have a product that's not just 'you.' An actress should count up her plays and movies and a model should count up her photographs and a writer should count up his words and an artist should count up his pictures so you always know exactly what you're worth, and you don't get stuck thinking your product is you and your fame, and your aura." (Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), San Diego, New York and London, 1977, p. 86). The film stars of the late 1950s and early 1960s that most obsessed Warhol embodied tectonic shifts in wider cultural and societal values. In 1971 John Coplans argued that Warhol was transfixed by the subject of Elvis, and to a lesser degree by Marlon Brando and James Dean, because they were "authentically creative, and not merely products of Hollywood's fantasy or commercialism. All three had originative lives, and therefore are strong personalities; all three raised - at one level or another - important questions as to the quality of life in America and the nature of its freedoms. Implicit in their attitude is a condemnation of society and its ways; they project an image of the necessity for the individual to search for his own future, not passively, but aggressively, with commitment and passion." (John Coplans, "Andy Warhol and Elvis Presley," Studio International, vol. 181, no. 930, February 1971, pp. 51-52). However, while Warhol unquestionably adored these idols as transformative heralds, the suggestion that his paintings of Elvis are uncritical of a generated public image issued for mass consumption fails to appreciate the acuity of his specific re-presentation of the King. As with Marilyn, Liz and Marlon, Warhol instinctively understood the Elvis brand as an industrialized construct, designed for mass consumption like a Coca-Cola bottle or Campbell's Soup Can, and radically revealed it as a precisely composed non-reality. Of course Elvis offered Warhol the biggest brand of all, and he accentuates this by choosing a manifestly contrived version of Elvis-the-film-star, rather than the raw genius of Elvis as performing Rock n' Roll pioneer. A few months prior to the present work he had silkscreened Elvis' brooding visage in a small cycle of works based on a simple headshot, including Red Elvis, but the absence of context in these works minimizes the critical potency that is so present in Double Elvis. With Double Elvis we are confronted by a figure so familiar to us, yet playing a role relating to violence and death that is entirely at odds with the associations entrenched with the singer's renowned love songs. Although we may think this version of Elvis makes sense, it is the overwhelming power of the totemic cipher of the Elvis legend that means we might not even question why he is pointing a gun rather than a guitar. Thus Warhol interrogates the limits of the popular visual vernacular, posing vital questions of collective perception and cognition in contemporary society. The notion that this self-determinedly iconic painting shows an artificial paradigm is compounded by Warhol's enlistment of a reflective metallic surface, a treatment he reserved for his most important portraits of Elvis, Marilyn, Marlon and Liz. Here the synthetic chemical silver paint becomes allegory for the manufacture of the Elvis product, and directly anticipates the artist's 1968 statement: "Everything is sort of artificial. I don't know where the artificial stops and the real starts. The artificial fascinates me, the bright and shiny..." (Artist quoted in Exh. Cat., Stockholm, Moderna Museet and traveling, Andy Warhol, 1968, n.p.). At the same time, the shiny silver paint of Double Elvis unquestionably denotes the glamour of the silver screen and the attractive fantasies of cinema. At exactly this time in the summer of 1963 Warhol bought his first movie camera and produced his first films such as Sleep, Kiss and Tarzan and Jane Regained. Although the absence of plot or narrative convention in these movies was a purposely anti-Hollywood gesture, the unattainability of classic movie stardom still held profound allure and resonance for Warhol. He remained a celebrity and film fanatic, and it was exactly this addiction that so qualifies his sensational critique of the industry machinations behind the stars he adored. Double Elvis was executed less than eighteen months after he had created 32 Campbell's Soup Cans for his immortal show at the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles in July and August 1962, and which is famously housed in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In the intervening period he had produced the series Dollar Bills, Coca-Cola Bottles, Suicides, Disasters, and Silver Electric Chairs, all in addition to the portrait cycles of Marilyn and Liz. This explosive outpouring of astonishing artistic invention stands as definitive testament to Warhol's aptitude to seize the most potent images of his time. He recognized that not only the product itself, but also the means of consumption - in this case society's abandoned deification of Elvis - was symptomatic of a new mode of existence. As Heiner Bastian has precisely summated: "the aura of utterly affirmative idolization already stands as a stereotype of a 'consumer-goods style' expression of an American way of life and of the mass-media culture of a nation." (Exh. Cat., Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie (and traveling), Andy Warhol: Retrospective, 2001, p. 28). For Warhol, the act of image replication and multiplication anaesthetized the effect of the subject, and while he had undermined the potency of wealth in 200 One Dollar Bills, and cheated the terror of death by electric chair in Silver Disaster # 6, the proliferation of Elvis here emasculates a prefabricated version of character authenticity. Here the cinematic quality of variety within unity is apparent in the degrees to which Presley's arm and gun become less visible to the left of the canvas. The sense of movement is further enhanced by a sense of receding depth as the viewer is presented with the ghost like repetition of the figure in the left of the canvas, a 'jump effect' in the screening process that would be replicated in the multiple Elvis paintings. The seriality of the image heightens the sense of a moving image, displayed for us like the unwinding of a reel of film. Elvis was central to Warhol's legendary solo exhibition organized by Irving Blum at the Ferus Gallery in the Fall of 1963 - the show having been conceived around the Elvis paintings since at least May of that year. A well-known installation photograph shows the present work prominently presented among the constant reel of canvases, designed to fill the space as a filmic diorama. While the Elvis canvases...

Shelli Langdale's "Horse with Jellyfish" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a white horse with pink jellyfish cast in blue light. This piece is unframed yet ready to ...

Oil and acrylic on canvas.

"He Opened His Hand And I Put My Stories Into It" (2024) is an original, handmade oil painting on canvas, by Amy Hutcheson, that depicts an abstract painting with colorful geometric ...