Warhol: Bardot, Davies Street, London, October 10–November 12, 2011

Installation Views

Installation view. Artwork © 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Mike Bruce — Installation view
Artwork © 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Mike Bruce

Installation video. — Installation video

Thumbnail - Installation view. Artwork © 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Mike Bruce

Works Exhibited

Andy Warhol, Brigitte Bardot, 1974. Acrylic, silkscreen ink, and pencil on linen, 47 ¼ × 47 ¼ inches (120 × 120 cm) © 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Mike Bruce — Andy Warhol
*Brigitte Bardot*, 1974
Acrylic, silkscreen ink, and pencil on linen, 47 ¼ × 47 ¼ inches (120 × 120 cm)
© 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Mike Bruce

Thumbnail - Andy Warhol, Brigitte Bardot, 1974. Acrylic, silkscreen ink, and pencil on linen, 47 ¼ × 47 ¼ inches (120 × 120 cm) © 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Mike Bruce

About

Brigitte Bardot was one of the first women to be really modern and treat men like love objects, buying them and discarding them. I like that.
—Andy Warhol

Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition of Andy Warhol’s portraits of Brigitte Bardot.

Bardot was the original sex kitten, a superstar of French New Wave cinema, and the embodiment of liberated feminine sensuality. Aged eighteen, she gained sudden and worldwide notoriety for her steamy role in Roger Vadim’s directorial debut, And God Created Woman (1956), which broke box-office records and censorship taboos with its titillating display of sex and eroticism in St Tropez. Despite mixed critical reviews, the film launched her career and presaged her international stardom. Bardot also caught the attention of French intellectuals: she was the subject of Simone de Beauvoir’s 1959 essay “Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome,” which described her as a “locomotive of women’s history,” building upon existentialist themes to declare her the first and most liberated woman of post-war France. Her crowning achievement occurred in 1963 as Camille in Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave masterpiece Contempt, based on Alberto Moravia’s emotionally raw account of a marital break-up, set against the intrigues of the international film industry.

Warhol first met Bardot at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967 when she actively supported his attempt to show Chelsea Girls there after the original planned screening had been cancelled. In 1973, at the height of her fame, she announced her retirement from making films. That same year Warhol received the commission to make her portrait. At the time that he was shifting his focus from filmmaking back to painting and perhaps viewed her coincidental screen exit as the perfect opportunity to commemorate and idolize her in art.

Artist

Andy Warhol

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