Since HBO's Succession premiered in 2018, artwork has been a centerpiece of the series' backdrop. The Hunt for Tiger, Lion and Leopard (1616), by Peter Paul Rubens, electrifies the first season poster, while Dante and Virgil (1850), by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, looms over the mantle in season two. In the last image, we also see a table of seated Roys which contributes to a power-hungry take on Norman Rockwell's Freedom from Want (1943).
Art in the Succession series is used in a variety of ways to talk about the characters' futures. One of the ways in which art reflects the characters' future is through the paintings that decorate their homes and offices. These paintings often show dark and disturbing landscapes, suggesting an uncertain and challenging future.
Another way art talks about the characters' future is through the art objects they own. For example, the painting that Logan Roy has in his boardroom, which depicts a hunting scene, is a symbolic representation of his predatory nature and his thirst for power and control. In the current and final season, the walls of Logan Roy's Manhattan apartment display a Dutch Golden Age landscape and an impressionist buffet, including works by Honoré Daumier, Paul Gauguin and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. That selection feels traditionalist compared to the more modern, contemplative works we see hanging around competitor Nan Pierce's California complex — including a painting of colorful countryside by Ronnie Lanfield — as if to reinforce the polarizing ideologies of its media conglomerates.
Clearly, the connection between the art and the characters in the series shouldn't be ignored. And now, following the plot twist of season four, episode three (spoilers ahead), it looks like the show's curation decisions may have left us with a hint of things to come. (Readers who haven't watched season four, episode three, may want to stop now.)
In fact, a pair of artworks may have foreshadowed Logan Roy's fate: death from a cardiac catastrophe, mid-air in a massive private jet.
Created just a year before the abrupt death of Andy Warhol in 1987 for cardiac arrhythmia, the series of six paintings from 1986, made of acrylic and serigraphy on canvas, place a cropped image of Warhol's head (colored in a different effervescent tone in each version) against a black background.
While we may initially interpret the paintings as a nod to the potential end of Willa and Connor's nuptials, in hindsight the dialogue hints at an upcoming funeral. "I'm not vital here", says Willa, justifying her departure. In response, Logan's daughter Shiv Roy asks, "Are you alright?"
Just as Warhol depended on others to produce his art, Logan often leverages the army of employees who work for him at Waystar Royco, including his children, to build his empire - and often, in the process, to do his work. dirty. It's no coincidence that minutes before his own death, Logan instructed his youngest son, Roman Roy, to fire a key executive, Gerri Kellman, in a possible perverse test of loyalty.
For both the real artist and the fictional entrepreneur, the line between creator and producer, genius and worker intentionally remains blurred. But it's in the final minutes of the show, when the fog of grief rolls over the Teterboro runway, that we see the legacies of Warhol and Logan line up as two iconic American celebrities.
Additionally, the series uses art to showcase the characters' ambitions and what they want to achieve. For example, when Kendall Roy decides to buy a media company, he chooses a painting of a giant wave to decorate his office, symbolizing his ambition to make a big deal and be successful.
Without a doubt, art in the Succession series is used to convey information about the characters' ambitions, personalities and desires, hinting at how they might develop and what their future will look like.
Since the episode aired Sunday night, TV critics have praised the writers' ability to make Logan's death feel like a surprise. However, as Kathryn VanArendonk of Vulture pointed out, we could and should have seen this coming. In addition to various plot points throughout the show, we could have focused more closely on the art at Connor Roy's rehearsal dinner at historic New York City restaurant The Grill in the previous episode: two Self-Portraits of Andy Warhol from 1986.
These two versions of Self-Portrait Andy Warhol, which appear onscreen for nearly a minute, offer a sense of foreboding that becomes even more obvious when examining the meaning of the portraits, their construction, and the parallels between Warhol's and Logan's legacies.
The artist's face, angular but flat, flickers in the darkness like a hologram moving in and out of definition. With lips parted to reveal a dark abyss, you can almost hear the artist taking his last shallow breath. If you observe the work closely, you will notice that the artist's face is transformed into the outline of a skull, elevating the portrait to the memento mori canon. It is here that Warhol's obsession with celebrity, death and the self comes together.
Perhaps this is why, consciously or unconsciously, Succession's creatives chose to film Connor Roy's future wife, Willa Ferreyra, in front of a white and green self-portrait. The painting hovers behind her as she is found by the rest of the Roy brothers running away for "a little drink" in the middle of their rehearsal dinner.
This phrase echoes in the brothers' absurd and tragic attempt to find out if their father is really dead in episode three, asking "Is he okay?" and in the parting words that Shiv delivers to Logan over his cell phone. According to art dealer Tony Shifrazi, Andy Warhol this work began with a photograph, which later went to a photographic laboratory that enlarged the selected photograph and transferred it to an acetate sheet. Warhol's own handprint emerged as he outlined his face and features on canvas. Finally, he completed the painting by passing paint on the marked canvas, assisted by an assistant.
“Logan Roy built a great American family business,” Shiv shakily told the press. “This nation has lost a passionate champion and an American titan, and we have lost a beloved father.”
Just as Logan Roy will be remembered for driving the sentiment of mass American culture into the monolith of the average that is ATN, Warhol, with all his Campbell's soup cans and Brillo boxes, likewise transformed everyday objects "low-brow" of America on its own money - print media conglomerate.
As for their respective successors? We'll have to keep watching.