The American Man (Portrait of Watson Powell), 1964
Information about the artwork
- Material2 parts; acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas
- Dimensions40.5 x 81.2 x 2.5 cm
- Year of acquisition2000
- Inventory numberUAB 511
- On viewOn view
- Copyright© 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Haydar Koyupinar, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich
More about the artwork
Andy Warhol’s portrait of Watson Powell, Sr., the founder of the American Republic Insurance Company in Des Moines, Iowa, exemplifies the importance of serial repetition in the artist’s work.
Commissioned by Powell’s son in 1964 for the new company headquarters, the work is based on a photograph of the sitter. Warhol initially planned a composition of thirty-two reproductions—one for each year that Powell, Sr., worked at the company. However, to fit the proportions of the lobby, the arrangement was ultimately reduced to a vertical row of eight images.
Contrary to Powell’s wish to use the already iconic pop colors of the time, Warhol opted for a reduced palette: while the backgrounds are kept in slightly varying shades of yellow and sienna, he replaced his usual black silkscreen ink with burnt umber, which creates visual uniformity and unity.
The official title of the work, “The American Man (Portrait of Watson Powell),” refers to the identity of the sitter as the figurehead of a renowned US company. By contrast, the informal titles “Mr. Nobody” and “All-American,” under which the work was listed in the inventory of the New York gallery owner Leo Castelli, underscore the paradoxical effect of Warhol’s technique: while repetition reinforces the presence of a motif, it also leads to its abstraction. Here, Powell becomes the archetype of a uniform corporate executive.
As with many of his portrait series, Warhol used the underlying motif beyond the commission and produced numerous variations of the screen print, including this work.
