PAUL STEPHENSON
AFTER WARHOL: UNIQUES THERE ARE FEW IMAGES MORE ICONIC THAN ANDY WARHOL’S 1964 POP ART INTERPRETATION OF JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS. NOW, ALMOST 60 YEARS AFTER ITS INITIAL RELEASE, THE LEGENDARY GRAPHIC OF THE FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES HAS BEEN REINVENTED BY THE LONDON-BASED ARTIST PAUL STEPHENSON FOR A CONTEMPORARY COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL ART. Created using Warhol’s original acetate, Af ter Warhol: Uniques comprises 40 large-scale silkscreen colourways of ‘Jackie’, which was created in response to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 22nd November 1963. Captivated by Jackie’s timeless glamour in the thousands of photographs subsequently printed in newspapers and magazines, Warhol worked with his assistant Gerard Malanga on his ar tistic representation of this historical moment. Between May and November 1964, Warhol created over 300 paintings of Jackie, including this par ticular image, which is based on a por trait created by the of f icial photographer for the Kennedy presidential campaign, Jacques Lowe. Changing the angle of Jackie’s face and cropping her hair, Warhol sought to capture her elegance and power through a modern mechanical process. This process has been followed meticulously by Paul, whose work has been featured by the likes of Vice, The Times and the BBC. From working with Warhol’s original printer on previous collections to sourcing the exact materials used by the Pop Ar t founder, Paul’s faithful rendering led his ar t to be titled ‘posthumous Warhols’ by the late Warholian exper t Rainer Crone. “At all stages of making these paintings, it’s always been about following the process and being accurate and true to what Warhol did,” says Paul, who hand-painted the background of each piece. “The end result is exactly what you would see in a Warhol painting hanging in a Tate Modern retrospective exhibition.” The acetate, a clear sheet manipulated with scissors and chemicals before being used to imprint the image onto a silkscreen, was the last par t of the process to be touched by hand by Warhol. With only one existing in the world, Paul now holds the key to the authentic reproduction of this ar twork by the ar tist, who famously remarked: “I think someone should be able to do all my paintings for me.” For more information, contact your local gallery or speak to an online art consultant.
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