Mao (Feldman and Schellmann II.125A)

Literature

Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann (2003) Andy Warhol Prints: Catalogue Raisonné 1962 – 1987, New York: Distributed Art Publishers, cat. no. II 125A.

Notes

Published by Factory Editions, New York in an unlimited edition, of which roughly 100 were signed by the artist in 1979, for an exhibition at the Musée Galliera, Paris that same year.

Andy Warhol’s Mao series, produced in 1972, stands as one of his most iconic and provocative explorations of political imagery within the Pop Art movement. Created in the wake of the U S president, Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China, Warhol turned his attention to Chairman Mao Zedong, the powerful and controversial figure at the centre of Chinese Communist rule.¹ Drawing from the widely circulated official portrait of Mao – reproduced in the Little Red Book, a compilation of his political philosophy, speeches, and quotations, and displayed throughout China – Warhol transformed this political image into an icon of global pop culture.

The Mao portraits reflect Warhol’s fascination with the intersection of propaganda, celebrity, and mass reproduction. By applying his silkscreen process, typically reserved for glamorous Hollywood stars like Marilyn Monroe or consumer icons like Campbell’s Soup, Warhol repositioned Mao as a celebrity figure. He heightened the imagery with gestural brushstrokes of vivid colour using blues, reds, purples, and greens, that disrupt the uniformity of the original portrait, lending Mao an unsettling charisma. This juxtaposition of authoritarian imagery with pop aesthetics sparked widespread debate, particularly given Mao’s association with a regime marked by strict control, censorship, and the devastation of the Cultural Revolution.

^1. No Author (no date) Revolver Gallery, Mao 125A, online, accessed 1 October 2025.