Kiku (complete set)
Kiku (complete set)
Signed Print
Andy Warhol
50 x 66cm, Edition of 300, Screenprint, 1983
£60,000-£90,000
$110,000-$170,000 Market Value Indicator
$110,000-$170,000 Market Value Indicator
¥540,000-¥800,000 Market Value Indicator
€70,000-€110,000 Market Value Indicator
$630,000-$950,000 Market Value Indicator
¥12,700,000-¥19,050,000 Market Value Indicator
$80,000-$120,000 Market Value Indicator
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Meaning & Analysis
Kiku is a complete set of three screenprints made in 1983. Each print depicts a chrysanthemum – kiku in Japanese, and the imperial emblem of Japan – in a different compositional and chromatic register: a single bloom against deep teal, two blooms against grey divided by a magenta band, and multiple overlapping blooms across a ground fragmented into pink, blue, and red zones. Signed and numbered from an edition of 300.
The Kiku series was produced in 1983 in connection with Warhol's sustained relationship with Japan, where his work had a significant following. The subject carries specific cultural weight: the chrysanthemum is the imperial symbol of Japan, appearing on the Imperial Seal, and its selection was therefore not simply botanical. Warhol's treatment is characteristically disinterested in that symbolism as such – the flower is approached as a dense, spiralling natural form that suits his method – but the choice of subject is itself a form of engagement with the country.
The three prints are compositionally distinct in a way that distinguishes this series from most of Warhol's single-image serial work. The first isolates a single large bloom in near-monochromatic teal, the fine gold outline drawing describing the petals with exceptional detail. The second introduces a second flower and divides the ground with a vertical hot-pink band – two blooms now in dialogue, separated by a stripe of colour. The third opens into a scattered, multi-bloom composition, the ground fragmenting into competing colour zones, the image approaching something closer to pattern than portrait.
