This summer great plans and a lot of movement in Beijing, chosen as the capital for the Olympic games 2008, where athletes from all over the world are landing as well as a special team of sportsmen selected by Andy Warhol. Indeed, the Chinese city has decided to host, from the 26th July in the venue of the Faurschou gallery, a famous collection of portraits by Andy Warhol dedicated to some very notorious athletes. The ten portraits of the “Athletes” series, serigraphs and acrylics, represent renowned faces, both of men and women, from the sports world including Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay), O.J. Simpson, Chris Evert and Jack Nicklaus, and were commissioned at the end of the seventies by Californian collector Richard Weisman, one of Norton Simon’s nephews, founder of the homonymous Californian museum. The collection, which back then was bought for 800,000 dollars, last year was exhibited in London by private collector Martin Summers, naturally with Mr. Weisman’s permission, for a base request of 28 million pounds, but it was left unsold.
Now Weisman has decided to rely on the emerging Oriental market, handing the series of portraits to the Faurschou gallery, probably counting on the interest of some wealthy collector. Although the Chinese territory has already housed exhibitions of Warhol’s portraits, such as the ones of Michael Jackson and Mao Tse Tung, the current exhibition is presented as the greatest exhibition of the artist’s portraits in China, where the market of his works is still not very well-established and is in a trial phase.
In fact, at the moment in China there are no publically known collectors of Warhol, if not an uncertain intuition on the collector from Hong Kong Joseph Lau who, according to indiscretions, could have bought Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) from 1963, sold in May 2007 at Christie’s New York for more than 70 million dollars, setting at the time the record for a work by the pop artist.
Unlike the market and collectors, contemporary artists of the Oriental territory know very well Warhol’s work, they have been influenced by it, its fame and its inspiration have an incredible charm for them.
Jennifer Vorbach – first International director of the post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s, now independent consultant and curator of the exhibition in collaboration with the Faurschou gallery and Robin Navrozov – reassures and confirms with certainty that she is aware of Warhol collectors in China. Neither Vorbach nor the gallery have spoken about the current request price of the collection and simply reply that if the right opportunity knocks on the door they will put the interested people in contact with Mr. Richard Weisman himself.
Warhol realized 8 complete collections of the “Athletes” series, as well as many other portraits of the people from the “beautiful world” – icons of consumerism as many other widely used objects – completed in the same period and characterized by the same trait, and each one bears both the artist’s and the represented athlete’s signature.
Besides Weisman’s series, of the other seven collections dedicated to sport “icons” three have gone to Richard Weisman’s sons, two to the University of Maryland and to the University of California in Los Angeles, one has been unbundled and divided between different sport associations of the celebrated disciplines, and one has been given to the athletes who posed for them.
Last November, one of the pictures of the latter divided collection, a portrait of Muhammad Ali, was conceded by the great boxer’s ex wife to Christie’s New York, which sold it for 9.2 million dollars.
Therefore, in Beijing, the sport event par excellence and athletes of exceptional value are meeting in a fortunate coincidence, becoming for the city an occasion to experience sport from different perspectives.

http://www.faurschou.com/beijing/english/home/

translated by Giorgina Arcuri