Mao

This is an enormous portrait of Mao Zedong, the Chinese ruler who lived from 1893 to 1976. It stands nearly fifteen feet tall and is more than eleven feet wide, so it towers over anyone standing in front of it. Andy Warhol made it with acrylic paint, silkscreen ink, and pencil on linen, a woven fabric. Silkscreen is a printing method where ink is pressed through a fine screen to transfer an image onto a surface. Step back first and let the sheer size sink in.

Look closely at Mao's face. The image underneath comes from a photograph, so it feels realistic. But bright, garish colors have been applied over the face the way makeup is applied, and they make it look plastic and artificial. Then notice the brushwork across the portrait. The color is handled loosely and with sweeping, energetic gestures, which makes this one of the most painterly moments in Warhol's work. Move your eyes back and forth between the photographic image and the paint on top of it.

Andy Warhol, an American artist who lived from 1928 to 1987, made this work in 1972. Early in his career he began using the silk-screen process to move photographed images onto canvas. With it he made repeated portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Jacqueline Kennedy. He also repeated images of mass-produced products, including Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles. This painting comes from his Mao series, where he joined that signature style to a much larger scale.

Warhol is often called the most influential of the Pop artists, who looked coolly and ironically at commercial culture and the worship of celebrities. Here he turned that attention to politics. The painting's huge size imitates the images of Mao that were displayed everywhere in China, and it points to the cult of personality around him, meaning the way a leader is made into an almost godlike figure. Look a little longer at the face, where the realistic photograph and the artificial color meet, and ask which one feels more real.