by Andy Warhol White disaster (white car accident 19 times) sold at Sotheby’s New York last year for $85.4 million. The sale price was a record for a Warhol painting, making white disaster one of the most valuable works of art ever to go under the hammer.
One of Warhol’s best-known early pieces is the 12-by-6-foot vertical painting, a screen-printed grid of a car accident on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1963. It is considered a seminal work of Pop Art, defining the movement with its use of everyday imagery and its exploration of non-traditional themes.
After his inaugural exhibition at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1964, white disaster has traveled to major museums around the world, including MoMA (1968 and 2014), the Tate Gallery (1970), the Center Pompidou (1977 and 2018) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1989).
Yet youhe buyer of white disaster was unidentified last year and has remained unknown until now.
Andy Warhol, White disaster (white car accident 19 times) (1963). © 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Artnet News can confirm that the buyer was Peter M. Brant. The mega-collector purchased Warhol’s work – anonymously over the phone – to serve as the centerpiece of the Brant Foundation’s upcoming exhibition of the artist’s work at its East Village location (the building was purchased to the artist The estate of Walter de Maria in 2014). Containing more than 1,000 works of contemporary art, the foundation’s collection is one of the largest in the world.
The exhibition, titled “Thirty are better than one(May 10 to July 31), covers Warhol’s entire career and includes more than 100 works of art, ranging from his early drawings and sculptures to his famous Polaroids and serigraphs. The show takes its title from Warhol’s eponym mona-lisa gate.
Andy Warhol, Thirty are better than one (1963). © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Brant told Artnet News that he has been collecting Warhol for over 60 years. “Leo Castelli first introduced me to Andy in 1968 when I had already been collecting his work for some time,” he said. “[Warhol] embodied the characteristics of a true Leonardo figure – highly intelligent, a talented writer, influential in film and performance, and an expert in imagery. Its impact is felt through the work of many artists today.
Brant and Warhol’s friendship lasted until the artist’s death in 1987, when Brant took over editing Warhol’s Interview magazine. Brant continued to collect Warhol, amassing one of the largest collections of his works in the world. Brant has also been a major funder of several exhibitions, including 2018″Andy Warhol: from A to B and back again.”
Andy Warhol, Big Campbell Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable), (1962). © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
In “Thirty Are Better Than One”, the foundation will also display Big Campbell Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable), which Brant acquired at auction in 2017, according to a spokesperson. This will be the first time the work has been shown in New York since Warhol’s traveling retrospective “Andy Warhol: A Retrospective” at MoMA in 1989.
The piece is one of Warhol’s first Campbell’s Soup Can paintings and the only one to feature a can opener, marking the start of a sequence of 11 paintings that ended with a crushed soup can. Additionally, the painting became the first of Warhol’s images to be shown in a museum when it was exhibited at the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1962.
“Thirty are better than oneis on view at the Brant Foundation, New York, from May 10 to July 31, 2023.
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