Andy Warhol

Self-Portrait (Fright Wig)

Created in the months preceding the artist’s death in 1987, Self-Portrait (Fright Wig) offers a coda to the motifs and subjects that Andy Warhol explored throughout his prolific career. Named for the trademark wig of peroxide blonde hair, the work portrays Warhol’s performance of his persona as a subject, an artist, and finally, a celebrity. Executed in his iconic silkscreen technique, the self-portrait presents the artist’s emerald-colored face hovering above a brooding dark background and staring quizzically at the viewer. Portraiture was a constant throughout Warhol’s career. While his depictions of Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Elvis Presley might seem an unabashed celebration of celebrity cult, they also foregrounded the morbid undercurrent of a consumerism marred by death, disease, and deterioration. The artist fossilizes his own image through a treatment at once grim and fawning, one he skillfully applied to other celebrities but most ruthlessly enacted upon himself.