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Screenprint on wallpaper, 1974 (printed 1989), published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in conjunction with “Andy Warhol: A Retrospective,” February 6-May 2, 1989, 101.9 x 74.9 cm.
This portrait from 1974, features the face of Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and founder of the People’s Republic of China. Warhol used an image of Mao taken from a copy of ‘The Little Red Book’, a collection of speeches and quotations by Mao Zedong. Warhol’s ‘Mao’ portrait series began in circa 1972 and marked a new political alliance for America and China, as President Richard Nixon travelled to China that year to meet Chairman Mao to form an alliance after years of isolation.
Beginning in the 1960s, Warhol grew increasingly interested in the effect a wallpapered wall could have upon the work hung upon it. This interest prompted him to play with wallpaper as installation art to enhance his works. As part of this experiment, Warhol created the purple Mao Wallpaper in 1974 to decorate the walls of the Palais Galliera in Paris. The exhibition walls were covered in Mao wallpaper, staging an interesting interplay between the artworks hung upon the walls and the walls as art themselves.
