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Warhol ‘selfie’ expected to fetch £7m

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ANDY Warhol’s “first selfie”, the painting which catapulted the pop artist to worldwide fame, is going under the hammer.

Warhol created his first self-portrait in 1963, when he was 35 – and best known for his images of stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy and Liz Taylor, as well as Campbell’s soup cans. The image, created using a strip of photograph­s taken in a New York dime-store photo booth, is expected to fetch £7 million (R113m) at Sotheby’s.

Emma Baker, contempora­ry art specialist at the auction house, said: “It is the moment when Warhol the icon was born. Everybody is looking to create their own brand now. The selfie is so ubiquitous and it’s all about self-image. But Warhol really was at the forefront of this whole phenomenon, which has only just caught up to his prophetic way of thinking.”

The work will appear at auction, in London, 30 years after the artist’s death in New York in 1987. His first self-portrait came after Warhol’s dealer had been trying to persuade the pop artist to turn his eye on himself for some time, saying: “People want to see you. Your looks are responsibl­e for a certain part of your fame.”

Baker said of the work: “It was the moment that Warhol, who predicted that in the future, everyone would be ‘worldfamou­s for 15 minutes’, turned to his own image.

He became as iconic as the people he had painted.” She described the image as his “first selfie”. In 1968, the artist was critically wounded by a gunshot and, although he survived, themes related to the fragility of human life became more prominent in his work. His later self portraits feature skulls and became “more meditative and reflect on the idea of death”.

The portrait is being sold by a private collector, who has had the image since 1985. Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, (1963/64) is expected to fetch between £5m and £7m when it goes under the hammer at Sotheby’s Contempora­ry Art Evening Auction in London on June 28. – The Independen­t

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ANDY WARHOL

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