b. 1928, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, USA
d. 1987, New York City
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) is one of our era's most highly profiled and influential artists. His soup cans, Coca Cola bottles and Marilyn Monroe paintings are known the world over, and we would be hard pressed to exaggerate his impact on the development of modern art. By the time Warhol painted his first pictures in the late 1950s, he had already achieved great success as a commercial illustrator. His first artworks indicate an awareness of the power of advertising. Early on he developed a screen-printing technique which enabled him to deploy the mechanics of mass production. By printing a motif (often appropriated from someone else’s photographic material) directly onto canvas, Warhol reduced ‘the presence of the artist’ in the final work. Such works seemed to function as neutral reflections of society, independent of his hand or attitudes and opinions.
In the early ‘60s, parallel to his interest in superficial movie stars and cola bottles, Warhol also focused on the darker side of American society. In the Disaster series he took recourse in newspaper photos of accidents and death, and in Race Riots, he presented to the world the racist reactions of armed policemen attacking black demonstrators. Discussion continues as to weather these pictures express Warhol’s political views or whether they are neutral depictions of social phenomena.
Big Electric Chair (1967) is interesting in this respect because it is based on a photo thought to have been taken in the execution room at New York’s Sing Sing Prison. It was there the state’s last two executions were carried out in 1963. The executions triggered strong reactions in the mass media, and Warhol made his first electric chair pictures that same year. Four years later he returned to the motif, producing several large-canvas versions of it.
In Big Electric Chair, the fatal piece of furniture becomes an embodiment of the death penalty, but Warhol also turns it into an ambiguous symbol of American authority and rule of law. He exposes the lawful yet gruesome death penalty for what it is, but simultaneously creates a picture of a chair that is almost frighteningly aesthetic.
The picture is screen-printed. This mass-production technique can be interpreted as commenting on how television networks in the late ‘60s started broadcasting pictures of catastrophes into people’s homes to the point of excess. Warhol was curious about how the repetition of gruesome scenes would empty the pictures of meaning. Even in the ‘60s people were concerned that the steady flow of impressions would blunt viewer’s feelings. Warhol’s interest here contrasts markedly with his persona as someone who embraced indifference, and it is difficult for us to look at Big Electric Chair without being affected by the premeditated terror such an instrument of death projects.
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