Galleria Lucio Amelio, Naples
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in ▨1985

Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, Vesuvius by Warhol, 1985, p. 49, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is softer in the original, with the greens tending more to grass green, the red of the volcano more to orangey-red, the orange of the flames more to peachy-orange, the grey of the fumes to a lighter charcoal grey and that of the mountains more to dove grey. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is a faint stretcher mark to the orange in the central right of the composition. There is some light wear to the four extreme corner tips, with some associated minute specks of paint loss. There is a small cluster of minute fly spots to the lower part of the flames to the left of the volcano, and to the dove grey mountain passage, in particular to the left part. There is a minute protrusion 5cm above the centre 0of the bottom edge and a minute fibre adhering to the work's surface in the red passage towards the right side of the volcano, approximately halfway down the slope. There is a spot of minute fly spots to the top left quadrant of the flames, in the right part of the composition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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"An eruption is an overwhelming image, an extraordinary happening and even a great piece of sculpture" (Andy Warhol in Exhibition Catalogue, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, Vesuvius by Warhol, 1985, p. 35)

One of only four large format canvases in this uncharacteristically small series produced by Andy Warhol in 1985, Vesuvius simultaneously enshrines in a vibrant and dynamic composition the vital, indomitable energies of this most iconic Neapolitan landmark, the overwhelming passion of the city that thrives in its shadow and the tempestuous and exuberant personality of Lucio Amelio, the foremost Neapolitan dealer of⛎ his day and personal friend o🅠f the artist who commissioned the series.

Four years earlier, Amelio had commissioned works from a group of artists including Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Keith Haring and Jannis Kounellis, for a planned exhibition entitled Terrae Motus. This celebrated show was held in response to the earthquake in Epoli, just south of Na𓂃ples, which occurred in November 1980 claiming the lives of over 2,700 people and causing widespread damage and destruction to the surrounding countryside. The show firmly placed Naples on the map of the Contemporary Art world and Warhol's experience of the city and his encounter with Beuys in particular made a lasting impression on the artist. In the present work, Warhol references the senseꩵ of disaster that characterised the earlier group exhibition, taking as his subject the totem of natural beauty and latent destruction that renders Naples an extraordinary and unique place.

 

As Robert Rosenblum noted, Warhol, the pre-eminent artist of the late 20^th Century, was "a singular artist of our century, a strange hybrid of major journalist, chronicling the broadest spectrum of public experience, and media master, who can be at once painter, photographer, draftsman, decorator, sculptor, filmmaker, and illustrator." (Exhibition Catalogue, Andy Warhol: A Retrospective, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1989, p. 28) From the myriad subjects which Warhol chose to depict, two overarching themes emerge, recurring over and over again throughout his oeuvre: the legacy of art history and the omnipotence of death. Vesuvius is significant in its incorporation of both.

Realised for a solo exhibition in the prestigious Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, an hallowed space habitually reserved for the old masters and the classical Italianate landscapes of Claude Lorraine, Warhol's Vesuvius cannot help but engage with art history. Rewriting tradition, Warhol manipulates and inflects this recurrent topos of the Neapolitan and Romantic traditions with his vibrant colours, flamboyant line and overtly contemporary lexicon. Returning to the genre of landscape that he first explored in the Do It Yourself series in 1962, in Vesuvius Warhol's treatment of the motif of choice for many Grand Tour artists in an explosion of electric hues of orange, sulphuric green, blue and purple, pushes to its logical conclusion the notion of the kitsch that first emerged in the multitude of souvenirs that proliferated around Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Neapolitan depictions of Vesuvius became increasingly popular among Grand Tourists, including the canvases of Camillo de Vito, on whose 1794 painting, Eruzione del Vesuvio, the present work is based, as well as an esteemed lineage of British artists, including Joseph Wright of Derby and JMW Turner who painted the volcano on numerous occasions. In Vesuvius, Warhol updates art history, mixing ancient myth with modern, vital culture and conferring on the past a rejuvenated pertinence to the present. As such, Vesuvius can be seen in the context of the other appropriations of Warhol from his Art After Art series, including his Mona Lisa paintings and The Scream (after Edvard Munch), which firmly align him in the a🗹rt historical pedigreꦉe.

 

On the one hand an image of life affirming vitality, Vesuvius, with its creeping threat of impending precariousness and destructive catastrophe, is simultaneously laced with the theme of tragedy and morbidity that permeates Warhol's entire oeuvre, revisiting the haunting contemplation of death so sensationally depicted in the Suicides, Disasters, Car Crashes and Electric Chairs from the early 1960's. In the 1980s, series including Skulls and Guns marked a more profound reflection on the concept of mortality. Similar to his Atomic Bomb of 1965, or his Most Wanted Men series of 1964, in Vesuvius, we are not looking at death itself, but at its imminence or threat; a spectre which weighed heavily on the artist.  As Warhol noted early in his career, "I realized that everything I was doing must have been Death." (the artist cited in Exhibition Catalogue, Houston, The Menil Collection, Andy Warhol: Death and Disasters, 1988-89 p. 19) In Vesuvius, Warhol returns to his thematic preoccupation rig🍌ht at🅘 the end of his career, dramatically presaging his own untimely demise two years later. 

 

Executed towards the very end of Warhol's stellar career, the Vesuvius series witnesses his return to the hand-painted, brushy technique instead of the screen-printing process which he pioneered in the 1960s. As powerful and pertinent today as it was at its inception, in the present work he once again – after an interval of some twenty years – allows the paint to drip down the canvas, an effect he liked for its implied spontaneity: "I painted each Vesuvius by hand, always using different colours so that they can give the impression of having been painted just one minute after the eruption" (Exhibition Catalogue, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, Vesuvius by Warhol, 1985, p. 35). This technique of expressionistic brushwork over a flat, silk-screened ground, is an inversion of the technique used in earlier series, such as the Reversals and Ladies and Gentlemen, where Warhol had applied the flat, democratizing surface of the silkscreen over the brushy, drippy background. Through this exceptionally rare technique, the power of this image is instantly felt. As Martin Creed remarked upon selecting this particular example for the Artists' Favourites exhibition, "I remember seeing Warhol's Vesuvius for the first time and thinking it was beautiful, like an ice cream.  It was a relief." (Martin Creed cited in Exhibition Catalogue, London, Institute for Contemporary Arts, Artists' Favourites: Act II, London, 2004, p. 9).

 

For Warhol, this Vesuvius represented a confluence of interests, a traditional motif which he could reinterpret through his inimitable language of technicolour, translating it into a perfect pop package. At the same time, however, the image references the recent natural disaster and further asserts the artist as the most important visual chronicler of the twentieth century. The effect is breathtaking, as themes of death, celebrity, and art historical continuity are recycled and re-energized by the genius of Warhol. A latter day history painter, with Vesuvius, Warhol earns his💖 place alongside Caravaggio in the vast and sumptuous rooms of the Museo di Capodimonte.