Kiku 1983

Andy Warhol made this piece, Kiku, and it’s all about color and process, a real Warholian recipe. It’s silkscreened, so there's this flat, graphic quality, but the colors! They're clashing and singing at the same time. The blooms themselves feel like they're almost falling apart, dissolving into these high-key hues. Look at that lower bloom on the left side! The way the blue outline vibrates against the orange filling is so good, so discordant, it's like a visual buzz. Warhol was always about repetition and mass production, but he was also a master of imperfection. I feel like this piece relates to his earlier work in the way it takes a simple subject and blows it up to this iconic scale, but with even more attitude. You see that in Elizabeth Murray's fractured forms, too. Art’s always in conversation, right? No one has the last word.